TOBY 

STORY 
*,af a DOG- 




COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 









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TOBY 


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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 


























































































































































































































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Toby. 








TOBY 


BT 

ELIZABETH E. GOLDSMITH ^ 

'! 


“ There are men and women in the world who, of their own free 
will, live a dog-less life not knowing what they miss.” 

— Henry C. Merwin’s Dogs and Men. 


ILLUSTRATED 


Nefo gorfc 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1913 

All rights reserved 



QJ-.79S 
,3<b Q 7 


COPTBIGHT, 1918 

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 


Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1913. 


** •• * 

* 


Norbjoob 5Preat5 

J. 8. Cushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 


xj 


©CI.A354672 





TO 

L. W. R. 

WHOSE ENCOURAGEMENT AND INTEREST 
OPENED AGAIN THE WAY. 






LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


Toby. Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

Wrinkles ......... 6 

Rob-roy McGregor. 35 

Another pact there was.40 

If raccoons and rats were legitimate prey, why not 

the cat ?.46 

The Three Musketeers. 74 

The raccoon crouching on a limb far out of reach . 83 

Trying to climb a tree to get the ’coon ... 84 

Blarney, Toby, and Rob-roy McGregor . . .104 

There was much for Toby to do these days of 

farming.145 

A truly pastoral existence.147 

Hers was the garden type of mind .... 157 

A chipmunk the alluring chase of the unattainable. 160 

The tireless energy of the fox terrier . . .178 

Pupsie.207 

No more did he bound through the tall grass as if 

he were flying ..214 

vii 





TOBY 


“ The dog , 0 Spitama Zarathustra / /, Ahura- 
Mazda have made self-clothed and self-shod f watch¬ 
ful , wakeful , and sharp-toothed , born to take his 
food from man and to watch over man's goods. 
/, Ahura-Mazda have made the dog strong of 
body against the evil-doer , and watchful over your 
goods when he is of sound mind. 

“And whosoever shall awake at his voice , neither 
shall the thief nor the wolf steal anything from his 
house , without his being warned: the wolf shall be 
smitten and torn to pieces; he is driven away , he 
flees away. 

* * * * * * * 

“ If those two dogs of mine , the shepherd's dog and 
the house dog pass by the house of any of my faith¬ 
ful people , let them never be kept away from it. 
For no house could subsist on the earth made by 
Ahura , but for those two dogs of mine , the shepherd's 
dog and the house dog. 

“ Whosoever shall smite either a shepherd's dog , or 
a house dog , or a Vohunazga dog , or a trained dog , 
his soul , w/ien pass ngr to the other world , s/iaZZ fly 
amid louder howling and fiercer pursuing than the 
sheep does when the wolf rushes upon it in the 
lofty forest. 

“ No soul will come and meet his departing soul 
and keep it through the howls and pursuit in the 
other world; nor will the dogs that keep the Kinvad 
bridge help his departing soul through the howls 
and pursuit in the other world." 

— Zend Avesta, Part /, The Vendiddd. Trans, 
by James Darmesteter. 

B 


“The dog , independently of his beauty , vivacity , 
strength and swiftness , ftas all the interior qualities 
which can attract the regard of man. The tame dog 
comes to lay at his master s feet his courage , 
strength and talents , and waits his orders to use 
them; he consults , interrogates and beseeches; the 
glance of his eye is sufficient , understands the 

signs of his will. Without the vices of man he has 
all the ardour of sentiment; and , what is more , he 
has fidelity and constancy in his affections; no 
ambition , no interest , no desire of revenge , no /ear 
6nZ that of displeasing him; he is all zeal , all 
warmth , and a/Z obedience; more sensible to the 
remembrance of benefits than of wrongs , he soon 
forgets , or onZ?/ remembers them to make his attach¬ 
ment the stronger; far from irritating , or running 
away , he even exposes himself to new proofs; he 
licks the hand which is the cause of his pain , /ie on/?/ 
opposes it by his cries , and aZ length entirely dis¬ 
arms it by his patience and submission 

— Buffon. 

‘‘One animal alone , among all that breathes 
upon the earth has succeeded in breaking through 
the prophetic circle , in escaping from itself to come 
bounding toward us , definitely to cross the enormous 
zone of darkness , ice and silence that isolates each 
category of existence in nature's unintelligible 
plan.” — Maeterlinck’s Our Friend the Dog. 


TOBY 


CHAPTER I 

“ Dogs live with man as courtiers round a monarch, 
steeped in the flattery of his notice and enriched with 
sinecures.”— R. L. Stevenson. 

) present a fox terrier pup to a 
girl as an alleviation of her woe 
over the recent death of a much- 
beloved pug, was, as one comes 
to think about it, a stroke of genius. 

Thus Toby entered into our life after seven 
years of tranquil existence with Wrinkles. For 
seven years, ever since she came to us a tiny 
puppy of eight weeks, Wrinkles the pug had 
delighted us with her cunning ways. Hers 
was the happy lot to be a pug in the days of the 
pug,—in the days when everything possible 
and impossible was fashioned in the likeness of 
a pug’s head, and when those who could not 
aspire to a real pug had a china one life 
size. Who, indeed, but the past owner of a 
3 






4 


Toby 


thoroughbred pug can realise what it meant 
in those days to have for your very own a 
plump, wrinkly little live pug, whose skin was soft 
and loose, whose forehead a mass of adorable 
frowns, who had eyes of love, and oh, best of 
all ! — a tail that curled tightly around twice to 
the side of her back. Ah, to no other has it 
ever been revealed the love that a tightly 
curled tail inspires! 

Little Wrinkles had no distinct purpose in 
life except to love and to be loved, and inci¬ 
dentally to pick up every scrap of food she could 
find. Day in and day out her mistress was 
obliged to wrestle with Wrinkles on the question 
of diet. Her pride indeed was centred upon 
having Wrinkles “keep her figure”; and to the 
girl’s glory — not Wrinkles’, be it said — in her 
old age of seven years, the average span of life 
for a pug, no one would have dreamed to look 
at her that she was more than a pug in her 
teens. 

And every day she might be discovered 
haunting the precincts of the garbage can, which 
she watched with patient, inquisitive, and hope- 


5 



Toby 

ful interest, trusting that, soon or late, by some 
careless oversight — such as leaving off the cover 
— its mysterious and delectable contents might 
be revealed to her. 

That there was carelessness of which she 
surreptitiously availed herself, without scruple 
and without shame, was often proved by her 
anxiety on these occasions when any of us would 
happen to approach a wide divan well banked 
up with sofa pillows. Before we could be 
seated, Wrinkles would leap up upon it and 
begin frantically to dig and poke behind the 
pillows, tumbling them about in a frenzy of 
excitement until she had succeeded in unearthing 
her choice bit, which she held in her mouth, 
resting her cause now openly upon the nine 
points of possession, and breathing such defiance 
that, had she been a mastiff, we would have 
retreated in alarm. As she was only a wee 
little pug, however, more times than not, alas, 
she had to submit to having it taken away from 
her — and still she loved the girl ! 

She had her moments of joy, though, — joy 
far greater, may we not believe, than as if all 


6 


Toby 


her days had been spent in sluggish, slumberous, 
fat puggy content. When her harness was put 
on, for instance, with a fresh bow of ribbon tied 
smartly on the back, — a big bow of wide yellow 
satin ribbon that harmonised to perfection with 
her fawn-coloured and tawny brown skin, — her 
pride in her own good looks was divertingly 
unmistakable. She would be all a-quiver with 
vanity and delight, and would prink and preen 
and look over her shoulder and shake herself, 
as if to make the bells on her harness proclaim 
aloud her joy; then all impatience, with an 
air of the utmost importance she would start 
off on a visit of ceremony to each member of 
the family, making the rounds of the house. 
And not until she had attracted each one’s 
attention, been petted, and heard the expected 
words, “What a beautiful little dog you are!” 
would she be satisfied. Surely at times like 
these even little Wrinkles must have thought 
that dieting pays. Then indeed was the gar¬ 
bage can forgotten and we knew that she was 
glad she had been denied and kept a thing of 
beauty to the last. 



Wrinkles. 






























































































M 




















Toby 


7 


No wonder there was a grieving household 
when the time came to part with this little 
embodiment of love, and vanity, and beauty, 
and all endearing ways. 

And then the male member of the family 
said one day to the girl, looking at her in a 
most ingratiating, yet half-pitiful way, as much 
as to say, Come, brace up ! There are others 
(other manners, other ways), “How would you 
like to have me send you a fox terrier pup ?” 

She replied indifferently, “Oh, send him if 
you like.” Her manner of acceptance said 
plainly enough, however, “Do your best to make 
up to me, but there never, never will be another 
little dog that can take Wrinkles’ place with me.” 

Did he argue it out to himself that a fox 
terrier pup in a family means plenty of work 
and a vast amount of entertainment, and that 
plenty of work and even a small amount of 
entertainment will cure most troubles, be they 
great or small ? 

Ah, no! We may be sure that he did not. 
Genius is never conscious thinking. It sim¬ 
ply and unhesitatingly divines. With some it 


8 


Toby 


manifests itself in devising ways to heal up 
wounds and “make you happy.” And male 
members of a family, one sometimes thinks, are 
more highly endowed with this sort than even 
those who are nearest to them are apt to realise. 

And so to introduce a cyclone, a whirlwind, 
a merry, busy, engaging little bit of forked 
lightning into a house, that was mouldering 
away from the damp of tears over the loss of a 
quiet, loving, cuddly little pug, was, we may 
repeat, to display genius of no common order. 

Truly did the wise male member divine that 
we would now have no time on our hands in 
which to indulge in sentimental grief. 

As a panacea for every earthly woe a fox 
terrier pup can be recommended. 

It was in the late summer when Toby arrived 
by express from New York. He brought with 
him a pedigree so exalted, that it seemed an 
overwhelming responsibility to the girl to bring 
up even a dog with such a family tree. It 
took only a short time for her to Jearn, however, 
that in spite of his pedigree, he was an utterly 
principle-less little scamp with absolutely no 


Toby 


9 


morals whatever. He would kill, steal, sneak, 
deceive, and as for obeying — he hadn’t a no¬ 
tion of it. 

He was scarcely three months old, with a 
gloriously rakish black patch over his right eye 
and two black patches on his back. And now, 
instead of a gentle, adorable little pug, who was 
only happy where you were, imagine, if you will, 
an animated steel trap that is possessed by 
insatiable curiosity, and you have Toby. 

He was much too busy by day to give you a 
thought, but evenings a wholly reprehensible 
little bundle of ridgy muscles would bound into 
your lap with the force and velocity of a cannon 
ball. If by chance you pushed him off, he 
regarded this act of yours as the most cordial 
invitation possible for him to leap up again. 
Impetuously a warm red tongue would be ex¬ 
tended to lick your face, and only long practice 
in the art of dodging enabled you successfully 
to evade it. 

But when he stopped to look at you straight 
in the face — at this moment in full possession 
of your lap — looked at you with sharp, im- 


10 


Toby 


perative little eyes in which only rampant, 
unbridled mischief lurked — you might well 
be on your guard. There was something about 
anything “as plain as a man’s nose on his face” 
that interested Toby, and required almost 
microscopic investigation. And Toby, we may 
add, was inconceivably persevering when things 
interested him. He would cease paying atten¬ 
tion to anything else and regard you as if com¬ 
pletely fascinated, then make a sudden spring 
at your face, bringing his teeth together with a 
click — just missing, by a quick duck on your 
part, taking off neatly and unconcernedly the 
most prominent feature you owned. In truth, 
it was not until Toby’s puppy days were well 
past that we felt our noses safe. 

But if his evenings were spent in making 
playful dashes at your nose — not so his days. 

Toby marked the first day of his advent 
among us by killing a full-grown cat that was 
more than twice his size. Doing it, for that 
matter, with a swift precision and finished 
skill that made one think uncannily of the re¬ 
incarnation of some famous duellist. 


Toby 


11 


The second day the corpses of fourteen little 
chickens were found strewn about the lawn; 
Toby having a busy, alert air, and wearing a 
bright and cheerful smile. When confronted 
with them, he preserved his alert and busy air 
and gazed unblushingly from them to us, still 
smiling at us brightly. 

The third day the girl awoke to her responsi¬ 
bilities, and attempted to keep Toby under her 
eye, and the number of times that pup vanished 
from her sight makes the day memorable. It 
still fills her with shame even now, as she thinks 
about it, that on a farm of several hundred acres, 
with an inviting strip of woods stretching back 
of the house for miles, and the house itself on 
cross-roads with the grounds about it unfenced — 
it still fills her with abject shame, not that she 
failed, but that she should have tried in such sur¬ 
roundings to do a thing so absurdly impossible. 

But what a home it was, though, for a little 
fox terrier of a curious and investigating turn 
of mind ! Surely it is an enticing and thrilling 
experience, that of exploring every nook and 
cranny of one’s new home — and with such 


12 


Toby 


interesting specimens of natural history about, 
there was a life’s occupation here for Toby. 

The record of slaughter for the third day, 
as near as his mistress could make out, following 
wearily and anxiously upon the trail of her 
new pet, was one more cat, three kittens, seven¬ 
teen small chickens, and two broilers. 

He had eluded her ninety-seven times and 
twice had been absolutely lost for hours — as 
lost as if the earth had swallowed him up. 

And each time he was lost the story of Jack, a 
red Irish setter, came ominously to mind. Toby’s 
new home stood on a hill facing another hill 
three-quarters of a mile distant, where nestled 
a little village consisting of a post-office, a 
blacksmith’s shop, a Methodist church, and a 
general store where all things from tacks to cough 
syrup could be bought. On its rambling streets 
that led off this way and that, merging them¬ 
selves before you realised it into winding, country 
roads, clustered the pretty, simple homes of 
simple, unambitious people. Between the house 
on the hill and the village of Waverly lay the 
meadows, low flat land upon which clumps of wild 


Toby 


13 


iris grew. And through these meadows, with the 
station hardly a stone’s throw from the house, 
just at the foot of the hill, ran a railroad track. 

One morning, long before the days of Wrinkles, 
Jack had been found lying before the door of 
the village store when the proprietor went down 
to open up. The dog wore a handsome collar 
locked on but bearing no name. His coat was 
glossy and beautifully fine, he had tawny brown 
eyes that laughed at you, and indeed every 
bit of him was instinct with joy and grace and 
that nameless spirit that invites love and 
approbation. One had only to look at him to 
know that he had been dearly loved and cared 
for by someone. 

Yet now everything about his dejected and 
imploring air bespoke the lost dog. 

“ He was lost! — not a shade of a doubt of that; 

For he never barked at a slinking cat, 

But stood in the square where the wind blew raw 
With a drooping ear and a trembling paw, 

And a mournful look in his pleading eye 
And a plaintive sniff at the passer-by 
That begged as plain as a tongue could sue, 

O, Mister ! please may I follow you ?” 


14 


Toby 


How the man could have resisted anything 
so friendly and ingratiating lying there at his 
very door, we were never able to imagine. Evi¬ 
dently he had no eye for a dog. His heart, 
stony and insensible as it was, however, 
melted enough for him to try to find him a 
home where dogs were loved and wanted. 
And with that thought in mind he offered him 
to us, and Jack was a lost dog no longer. 

How many times we thought of his former 
owner and wondered where he was now and 
what he was like. He would be young and 
handsome, we children agreed, with something 
dashing about him, something brave, com¬ 
pelling, and irresistible. Peggie pictured him 
a blond, tall, athletic, with blue eyes and a 
sun-tanned face that made his beautiful white 
teeth look all the whiter when he showed them 
in a merry smile. But Nancy thought prob¬ 
ably he was a brunette, with large piercing 
black eyes, and hair dark as a raven’s wing. 
Janet was less positive as to looks and complexion. 
He might be like Rochester or Sir Lancelot 
or Siegfried, she explained oracularly to her 


Toby 


15 


sisters. If he were like Rochester he would 
be dark, and cross, and domineering, and ideally 
ugly to look at, but nothing mattered some way 
when you were with him. If he were like Sir 
Lancelot, the great Sir Lancelot of the Lake — 
“Lancelot the flower of bravery” — he would 
be dark, too. For 

“ underneath his helmet flow’d 
His coal-black curls as on he rode, 

As he rode down to Camelot.” 

But if he were like Siegfried the Dragon Slayer, 
he would be fair. “Our King Siegmund with 
his consort the beauteous Siegelinde, had a 
youthful son, who was fair and strong and of 
a lofty spirit. While an infant on his mother’s 
lap, his clear blue eyes glanced brightly as 
those of an eagle, and whoever beheld him 
could at once perceive that in him the heroic 
spirit of his race existed and that his name 
would one time be mentioned with honour.” 

“It would be nice if he were fair,” Janet said 
musingly as she closed the book. But we could 
all see from these descriptions that complexion 
after all was a minor matter. And of one thing 


16 


Toby 


we were as a unit in our firm belief that no one 
old or crabbed could have owned such a dog as 
Jack. 

And how we dreamed that we should meet him 
some day ! Jack would be with us looking even 
handsomer and better cared for, and we pictured 
his joy and Jack’s as they caught sight of each 
other! And after their rapturous greeting, we, 
as faithful stewards, would come in for our share. 
Our young god — far handsomer he was than 
we had dared to dream — would tell us that 
we had won his undying gratitude. And then 
— of course, he would take Jack away from 
us — it wasn't a nice story at all. But Janet 
of more powerful imagination suggested a less 
dismal ending. He might not come for a long, 
long time, not until some of us were quite grown 
up. And then he might like one of us so well, 
that he would leave us Jack and stay with us, 
too, himself: “He might be the Hero, you 
know.” And so for many a year the hero he was 
of all our childish dreams — this wonderful, un¬ 
known owner of Jack. 

But we never saw him. We never learned 


Toby 


17 


his name. Many, many months later, however, 
we were told that a young fellow, on his way west 
on a hunting trip — no one told us whether he 
was good looking or not, but we knew — had 
stopped off for several hours at a neighbouring 
village trying to get track of his dog. The 
dog had been tied by a rope in the baggage 
car, and when the train stopped at this point, 
his master had gone in to see him and had 
found only the gnawed end of the rope. The 
dog was gone. 

In much grief, he had waited around dis¬ 
consolately, offering a large reward to anyone 
who would find the dog for him. The strange 
thing about it all, however, was, that not a 
soul could recall having seen such a dog. So 
finally, after aimlessly searching here and there 
without finding a trace of him, his owner had 
departed without leaving his name or address. 

When we heard this story, we knew without 
any question that Jack was that lost hunting 
dog. The time coincided perfectly with Jack’s 
appearance in Waverly, and, if we needed further 
proof, we had but to tie him up when we did 
c 


18 


Toby 


not wish him to follow. Before we had driven 
two miles he was sure to overtake us with the 
gnawed end of a rope or strap dangling from 
his collar. To gnaw himself away from restraint 
was a passion with Jack. 

Jack was no fighter, and in all the drives in 
which he accompanied us willy-nilly, he never 
met but one dog that he was able to subdue. 
And his haughtiness to that one dog — his 
magnificent air of heroic self-sufficiency — was 
the most insupportably arrogant thing one could 
possibly conceive of ! Especially was it so to 
us who were the daily witnesses of his craven 
attitude to other dogs. We learned to watch 
for his sudden disappearances as we approached 
houses where dogs of fighting tendencies lurked, 
waiting to do him up. He knew them all, 
these ill-tempered, fighting dogs, as he sauntered 
forth so gaily, so persistently a part of our 
apanage; knew just where a wide detour would 
be advisable for him, and just where he could 
catch up with us again with safety. He had 
all a red Irish setter’s love for chasing any¬ 
thing that would run before him — anything 


Toby 


19 


that would give him an excuse to run himself. 
Birds circling in the air, sheep peacefully 
grazing in the pastures as we drove by, and 
other person’s turkeys, and cats, and chickens — 
indeed, our drives about the country with Jack’s 
exhilarating attendance were never without 
excitement. Jack had a nature that would have 
picked up amusement out of the dull earth 
itself. 

Still amusing and agreeable as we found our 
dog, yet it must be owned that his presence 
as he scampered through the country with us 
was not infrequently attended by scandal. 
To stop for a little carriage call upon one of 
your friends — who likes not dogs, by the bye — 
and then to have your dog appear on the road 
ahead with nearly a whole ham in his mouth, 
seems, even to you, who hastily drive on, a 
not unnatural cause for comment. You drive 
on, but there are other mortifying possibilities 
for you. You mutter despairingly, “What 
shall we do?” as, with a town looming near, 
you see Jack whisk out of some farmer’s back 
yard and caper gaily ahead with a half-grown 


20 


Toby 


chicken in his mouth. But trust Jack to conceal 
his crime. Just as we are about to enter the 
town and all seems lost, Jack pauses for a 
moment on the bank of a small stream that 
meanders through the outskirts, and we see him 
carefully drop his victim into the water, watch 
it sink out of sight, and then trot light-heartedly 
on. 

Chickens and cats and birds and sheep were 
playthings not to be despised, yet it is question¬ 
able if any mere live thing was half so fascinating 
to Jack as a swiftly moving train of cars. 

The railroad at the foot, of the hill was built 
through the farm after Jack came to us. And 
whether he regarded the innovation as something 
to be resented — whether he looked upon each 
train as an unwelcome intruder upon his own 
especial domain, or whether it was to give it 
the salute joyous and amicable, to give it greet¬ 
ings of admiration because it was something so 
big, imposing, urgent, moving, alive — what¬ 
ever it was that impelled him we were never 
quite able to make out, but whenever he heard 
a train whistle, as they did just before coming 


Toby 


21 


around the bend, Jack would dash down the hill, 
wait for it at the crossing, and, unless it was 
moving too rapidly for him, he would dart back 
and forth in front of the engine barking furiously 
and excitedly. It seemed a perilous enterprise 
and, at first, everyone who saw him, including 
the engineers themselves, was in terror. In 
time, however, our apprehensions wore off. It 
was evident that Jack had the whole matter 
of time, and speed and space gauged to a nicety. 
And he would return to the house, after the 
train had entirely removed itself from the farm 
on its onward way east or west, with a manner 
of well-earned complacency. 

Possibly he thought he had been the cause of 
sending the trespasser off the place. 

In any case, this meeting of every train as 
it went through, Jack assumed as one of his 
responsibilities in life. And with what verve 
and liveliness and gusto he did it! He was 
so handsome, so playful, and so fearlessly sure 
of himself that he became a perfect pet with the 
engineers and trainsmen. They all knew him 
and would say smilingly, as they blew the 


22 Toby 

whistle for Waverly, “Now look out for 
Jack!” 

One day we missed Jack. He did not come 
home that night. All the next day and the day 
following he was gone. Four days went by and 
no one could tell us what had become of Jack. 

The master of the house became more and 
more distressed and anxious, and finally, on 
the fourth day, he unburdened his soul and 
told us that on the morning of the day Jack 
had disappeared he had been obliged to punish 
him severely. 

It seemed that Jack had followed him as 
usual into one of the fields that morning where 
he had gone to supervise the work of a new 
farmer. The farmer’s young son was there, too, 
and with him his dog. Now, however prob¬ 
lematic Jack’s attitude might be towards the 
trains, and however averse he might be to 
fighting strange dogs on the road, — averse to 
the point of seeming cowardice, — there was no 
mistaking his frame of mind towards another 
dog on the place. 

He was beside himself with jealous, vindictive 


Toby 


28 


rage. He made no doubt of his intentions to 
make mince-meat of this insolent upstart. He 
would chew him up and have done with him 
forever. And nearly did he succeed, moreover, 
before his master could pull him off. 

His master’s pity for the grieving boy and his 
bruised and lacerated pet had lent a double 
edge to his fury against his own dog, who had 
betrayed him so inhospitably. Reprimanding 
him sharply and sternly, he seized a horsewhip 
from the farmer and whipped Jack for the first 
time. Jack had looked up at him, his brown eyes 
that had always laughed before, now full of un¬ 
speakable anguish and humiliation. His master, 
pointedly ignoring him, notwithstanding his 
utter grief and abasement, turned to the sobbing 
boy and leaned down to pet the wounded dog. 

Jack had looked at them for a moment and 
then had slunk away. And the last his master 
could recall of him was seeing him go down 
through the field in the direction of the railroad 
track presumably to bark at an approaching 
train. 

The master told this to his family on that 


24 


Toby 


fourth day as if he wished to beg us to assure 
him that we saw no connection between the 
punishment and the disappearance of Jack. 
We responded bravely and loyally to the un¬ 
spoken wish, taxing our imagination for plausible 
explanations, and asserting stoutly our belief 
that Jack would come back. Yet we said it 
with sinking hearts, and there was the shadow 
of grief about us all. We could not shake off 
the feeling of uneasiness, and alas ! the next 
day word came that a track-walker had just 
told someone in the village of finding the 
crushed and mangled body of a dog a few days 
before, lying a lifeless heap on the tracks. He 
had thrown it to one side, never thinking of Jack. 
But now that everyone on the road was com¬ 
menting upon the dog’s absence, he had be¬ 
thought him of what he had found. 

Jack’s master hastened to the spot indicated 
by the track-walker, and there on the edge of 
the farm, that he in his dog way had watched 
and guarded so unwearyingly, lay indeed all 
that was left of poor, loving, reckless, high- 
spirited Jack ! 


Toby 


25 


Some writer of imagination got hold of the 
story and it went the rounds of the newspapers 
under the heading “Suicide of a Dog after 
being Punished by his Master.” 

If this were the story of Jack — and surely 
no dog had a more adventurous, romantic, and 
tragic history — one might take the time to 
speculate over the question of deliberate suicide 
or accident. 

It would be only speculation, however. The 
truth we never knew. 

The engineer who saw him last vowed with 
energy and emotion that no engine of his had 
caused the death of Jack. He was hauling a 
tremendously long train of freight, and the 
train was moving very slowly. It was an in¬ 
tensely warm day in early spring and he re¬ 
called that Jack had gone back and forth in 
front of the engine more languidly than usual, 
and as the train gained in impetus, he ceased 
the attack, having done his full duty. It was 
further thought by those who scouted the 
suicide theory that finding himself left on the 
wrong side of the track, — the wrong side 


26 


Toby 


being the side that was not home, — he had 
grown tired of waiting for that interminable 
train to pass, that seemed to crawl like a snail, 
and relying upon his own quickness and agility, 
he had attempted to get back home by darting 
under one of the moving cars, and miscalculating 
the speed of the train, had been crushed to death. 

As one thinks of proud, gay, loving, head¬ 
strong, jealous Jack, what a storm of feeling 
must have been in his heart as he responded 
to the call of the whistle — to that duty he had 
taken upon himself! Responded mechanically 
or desperately, who can say ? Whether he 
courted death or death overtook him, there is 
no question that the whipping — if it did not 
break his heart, broke his spirit. And there isn’t 
much difference, is there, whether it is your 
spirit or your heart that’s broken ? You are 
finished — done for, in either case. Poor Jack ! 

And now each time that rascally little fox 
terrier pup lost himself, the girl had visions 
of a lifeless little white body lying alongside the 
railroad track, crushed to death as poor Jack 
had been by some monster train of cars. 


n 


Toby 

Whatever had happened to him, this thing was 
sure — the proverbial eel and flea could not 
be mentioned with Toby. And the loss of 
Wrinkles, placid, comfortable, adorable Wrinkles, 
whose only real form of activity and resistance 
had concentrated itself upon the garbage can, 
seemed more and more immeasurable as the 
hazards and excitements of the day advanced. 

The first time Toby disappeared, James had 
finally located him under the hennery, where he 
was just putting the finishing touches to a full- 
grown hen. James managed to crawl under 
and bring him forth, spirits as rampant as ever, 
and restore him to the care of his anxious mis¬ 
tress. 

It must be confessed that, when late in the 
afternoon of that memorable third day, again 
he was not to be found, when again whistles 
and calls were unavailing, again the earth 
had apparently swallowed him up, the girl 
broke into a storm of tears. 

Metaphorically and vociferously she washed 
her hands of him. If he were lying dead on 
the railroad track, so much the better. Infinitely 


28 


Toby 


better to have it now than later, for — here she 
sobbed anew — she wasn’t fond of him yet, and 
later she might be. A dog of his temperamental 
activity was bound to come to an untimely 
end, so let it come now — she preferred it, she 
announced with a desperate air of finality, and 
would accept it with becoming grace and 
meekness; in fact, she concluded viciously, 
she would hail it with considerable joy; for 
she could readily foresee that what might be 
an apparent affliction would in reality be a 
felicitous release from no end of care and trouble. 

Thus she harangued, not to the empty air, 
for the whole family, including the maids, 
James, the farmer and his wife and four children, 
were assembled with her on the lawn. Every¬ 
one had turned in on this search, and they were 
all looking worn and haggard after having 
scattered themselves to no purpose over a 
two hundred and fifty acre farm, besides peering 
into every nook and corner of house, stable, and 
outbuildings. 

The hopelessness of keeping track of a dog 
of Toby’s inextinguishable curiosity and interest 


Toby 


29 


in such an immense variety of things, continued 
to assail the girl poignantly. It must indeed 
have lent an unaccustomed accent of despair to 
her voice, which, with such a lot of people 
crowding around, and all talking together, 
aroused Toby’s interest, for suddenly he ap¬ 
peared from underneath a grapevine trellis not 
ten feet away, and dropping a nice young 
broiler at the girl’s feet, he surveyed her in¬ 
quiringly. 

He was ready for any new thing that was going 
on, if it promised to be exciting, his look told her, 
and it did not require much discernment on 
the part of a sharp-witted little fox terrier to 
detect that there was a considerable amount of 
excitement in the girl’s voice. 

Toby stood there looking up into her face 
expectantly, and from that moment his mistress 
adored him. 

From that moment, too, she ceased her 
attempt of the impossible, which was that of 
keeping Toby under eye. For Toby was a 
very man-like dog; no woman could successfully 
keep him under her eye. And so realising 


30 


Toby 


this, she saw that she must begin to train him — 
one can do this sometimes with a dog — so 
that his conduct would be such that she could 
trust him, even when away from her, to almost 
any extent. 

And no one will gainsay that to arrive at 
such a trustful state of things requires consider¬ 
able training sometimes, — training or shutting 
your eyes. And if it is a situation where you 
cannot train, you would much better shut 
your eyes. 


Johannes Caius in a short treatise on “Englishe 
Dogges” written in Latin and newly drawn into 
English by one Abraham Fleming in 1576 , speaks 
of a dogge called Terrar , in Latin Terrarius. Of 
him the old writer says , “Another sorte there is 
which hunteth the Fox and the Badger or Greye 
onely , whom we call Terrars because they (after 
the manner and custom of Ferrets in searching for 
Connyes) creepe into the grounde , and by that 
means make afrayde , nyppe , and bite the Foxe and 
the Badger in such sorte that eyther they teare them 
in pieces with theyr teeth , beyng in the bosome of 
the earth , or else hayle and pull them perforce out of 
their lurking Angles , darke Dong eons, and close 
Caves; or else through conceived feare , drive them 
out of theyr hollow Harbours , insomuch , if they 
are not taken by Nette or otherwise , they are com¬ 
pelled to prepare for flighte, and being desirous of the 
next , albeit not the safest refuge , they are oft-times 
entrapped with Snares and Nettes layde over Holes 
for the same purpose.” 

“ The Terrier has a most acute sense of smelling 
and an inveterate enmity to all kinds of vermin. 
Nor is it excelled by any Dog in the quality of cour¬ 
age. It will encounter even the badger with the 
utmost bravery , though it often receives severe 
wounds in the contest , which however , it bears with 
unshrinking fortitude.” — Buff on. 


“Surely there never was so popular a dog , and 
he , unlike his noble master , does not appear to have 
become spoiled by flattery and by the adulations of 
the wealthy. In manner he remains the same as he 
always was; his eyes brighten and he springs up to 
*attention* when he hears the cry 'Rats!* now 
when he is worth four hundred pounds just as he 
did when he was a comparative *street dog* and 
worth less than a five-pound note.** 

— The Fox Terrier , Lee. 


CHAPTER II 


“Let Hercules himself do what he may 
The cat will mew and dog will have his day.” 

— Shakespeare. 

Quand on voit deux personnes constamment ensemble: 
“ c’est Saint Rock et son chien .” 

ANY were ready to take a hand 
in training Toby. There was the 
scotch collie, Rob-roy McGregor, 
who had just left behind him puppy 
days. He was only a year older than Toby, 
but in that year he was not unjustified in feeling 
that he had accumulated a vast amount of 
knowledge of all sorts of things that a little fox 
terrier also might like to know. Possibly Roy 
realised himself that, deprived of the legitimate 
occupation of a collie, he had wandered, from 
sheer excess of animal spirits, into a domain 
not properly his. It is possible, too, nay, it is 
more than probable, that he recognised, by some 
sure dog instinct, that this domain belonged by 



33 







34 


Toby 


rights to Toby. In any case, from the moment 
he saw Toby, he adopted him as a companion 
on all his adventures. He took him off to the 
woods each day and instructed him in the secret 
wisdom of wood lore. He showed him all the 
woodchuck holes he knew and explained how 
annoying he had found it to be obliged to sit 
around and wait for the woodchuck to come out, 
or just get one by chance — a slow and uncertain 
process at best. But now, to his joy, Fate had 
bestowed upon him a comrade with a spirit even 
more eager than his own; a spirit, moreover, 
not encased and hampered as his was by the 
body of a collie. This spirit that had come to 
be his pal, had for its outward expression a 
small, white, vigorous form that could go down 
into the earth where the woodchuck was hiding, 
and there give instant battle without these 
tedious waits. 

It is no wonder, then, that Roy hailed the 
advent of Toby with fervent delight. And with 
what persistence and enthusiasm they now 
worked together ! Toby would go down into 
the hole, and, while Roy standing on its edge 
















Rob-roy McGregor. 







Toby 


35 


gave voice to his delight and approval in loud 
and excited barks of encouragement, Toby, 
infant though he was, would slay the woodchuck 
and then tug its dead body out of the hole. 
Whereupon Roy would pounce upon it, pick 
it up in his mouth, and, with all the swagger of a 
bravo, proudly carry it home. 

It was a wonderful pact they had, these two 
adventurous spirits — a pact that lasted with 
their lives. To be sure, we could not pet Toby 
overmuch without Roy’s thrusting in a jealous 
head. That was not because he did not love 
Toby, however, but because like many a vain 
and handsome fellow, he fancied that by manag¬ 
ing to stand there upon all occasions, he really 
occupied the true and exact centre of the stage. 
It would have been utterly impossible for a dog 
of Roy’s spectacular instincts to realise that 
Toby, without desiring it in the least, without 
indeed giving it a thought, was the real hero 
who all unconsciously dominated each shifting 
scene. 

Life meant “doing things” to Toby. His 
satisfaction ended there. He knew no one 


36 


Toby 


better, whether he had done them well or ill. 
To Roy life meant doing things, too, but doing 
them with a tremendous flourish, interrupted 
by frequent applause. 

Besides Rob-roy McGregor to take him in 
charge, there was Blarney, the red Irish setter, who 
welcomed him, too, as a friend. Although Blar¬ 
ney, in his heart of hearts, only cared to race 
across the fields in true setter fashion after birds, 
yet just to be sociable and companionable he, too, 
would join in these daily expeditions to the woods 
and add his voice to Roy’s. And there in these 
woods the youngest dog of them all, instead of 
being taught, was already showing them what 
one who is born to a thing can do. Already, too, 
the older dogs, without being conscious of it 
in the least, had fallen into the position of 
mere satellites around this one vivid, eager per¬ 
sonality; borrowing warmth from his warmth 
and enthusiasm from his enthusiasm. 

Another, too, there was to interest himself 
mightily and persistently in shaping Toby’s 
career — and that was James. James was but 
a boy in those days whose business it was to 


Toby 


37 


groom the horses, run the lawn mower, work in 
the garden, and do errands. And it was a curious 
fact that, when not in the woods with Roy, 
wherever James was, Toby was almost sure to 
be there, too. Mornings, as James groomed the 
horses, there sitting on his haunches in the 
stable door could be seen a little white scrap of a 
dog. If his mistress called, anxious to begin 
her part of Toby’s training, apparently he never 
heard her voice. He would glance up at James 
and then sit as if glued to the stable floor. 

It did not require any deep penetration for 
Toby’s mistress to see that another pact had 
been formed with Toby, and again it was a 
life-long pact that death only ended. This 
compact of eternal love and friendship between 
Toby and James was made up of all those un¬ 
utterable things that can be only imperfectly 
indicated by such words as deepest understand¬ 
ing and sympathy. It was, in truth, one of 
those instantaneous recognitions that ignores 
all other claims. 

She could say to herself, it is no wonder Toby 
loves to hang around James in the stable when 


38 


Toby 


James lets him go into the grain bin where there 
are mice, and will stop doing anything in order 
to knock off a rat from a beam so that Toby 
can get it. But ruefully she had to admit 
that Toby was equally happy in the garden if 
James was there; the lawn, too, was an attrac¬ 
tive spot to Toby if James was mowing it; and 
he asked no better fun in life than to go with 
James of a morning to Waverly on errands and 
to get the mail. 

For that matter, whether James drove, went 
on his bicycle, or walked, this event, a daily 
one, — this going for the mail, — was a matter 
of momentous excitement to all the dogs. They 
were always on hand, leaping about him in an 
ecstasy of delight because he was good enough to 
make this enchanting excursion with and for 
them. There was apparently not a doubt in 
their minds that some especial manifestation of 
devotion was owing to James for this pleasure, 
and so each time they would pour out their 
gratitude and affection with the zeal and the 
freshness of enthusiasm that is ever flowing 
out from the heart of a dog. The dog knows the 


Toby 


39 


secret of continual joy. He takes nothing as a 
matter of course. 

More and more little Toby’s spirit answered 
to the lure of the woods. And at such times as 
the sound of Toby’s excited bark would come 
ringing back from the woods, accompanied by 
the sharp, quick bark of the collie and the 
deeper bark of the red Irish setter, one found that 
it was not always Toby who was the deserter for 
the sake of being with James. The eager, 
listening boy would drop the hoe, or rake, 
or whatever else he might be doing, and rush 
off to the woods, too, in the direction of Toby’s 
voice. Later, returning with such a marvellous 
story of pluck and fearless enterprise that we 
would quite forget that he was with us in any 
other capacity than as a Boswell to our Toby. 
We felt, indeed, confronted by the engaging 
frankness of his interest, that to have insisted, 
however gently, that there was other work of 
greater importance than that of witnessing Toby’s 
doughty deeds of valour, would have been to 
show ourselves inhuman to the last degree. 

It did not take long for Toby’s mistress to 


40 


Toby 


become fully alive to the fact, moreover, that 
James and Roy were each of them secretly bent 
on defying her in her efforts to train and subdue 
Toby. It was perfectly obvious, indeed, that 
they were all conniving against her, and that 
these two were openly and exultingly encourag¬ 
ing Toby in a life of lawless, unbridled carnage. 
It made her weep to see what the dog was be¬ 
coming under the influence of such fighting 
spirits as James and Roy. And her tears 
came, too, from the hidden smart that so far she 
was less than nothing to her dog. 

She did not need to be told that Toby was no 
woman’s dog. Toby told her so himself every 
hour of the day. Until evening came he ab¬ 
solutely ignored her — she did not exist. At 
night, however, because he was still a babe in 
years, although so frightfully grown up in all 
his tastes and appetites, he would deign to 
recognise her and would even make gracious 
claim upon her lap as a most comfortable 
place on which to slumber. 

These were mortifying days indeed ! Still 
craving a comfortable and unexciting existence 



Another Pact there was 





















































































































Toby 


41 


such as she had known before, her desires 
were being constantly frustrated by this stubborn 
resistance to law and order that encompassed 
her on all sides. 

Coercion brought no satisfaction either. She 
might say to herself, “ He is my own dog given 
to me for a pet and plaything.” But Toby cared 
nothing for her petting — nor would he be a 
plaything. Toby was a dog with a career. 

Now to be openly forsaken for another by 
your dog is almost as wounding to the feelings 
as the wanton neglect of a lover. You may 
curb your dog, a thing you would not attempt 
with a lover, to be sure. But even then your 
pride suffers no matter how well you are within 
your rights. To command another to restore 
to you your dog, being utterly unable to coax 
him from that other yourself, and then to see 
him crawl unwillingly in your direction, casting 
longing, backward glances at that other, and 
only coming toward you at all because that 
other tells him to do so, is an experience that is, 
indeed, death to your dear self-love. 

The world was surely out of joint for Toby’s 


Toby 


mistress. Something was radically wrong. 
And the crest-fallen manner of one who ordi¬ 
narily felt herself largely competent, was not 
unnoted by her family. Nor were mirthful 
comments unforthcoming. To be told in relish¬ 
ing accents that now indeed she had her hands 
full was, it must be admitted, not the least of 
the troubles of Toby’s mistress. 

She would look at that little white imp of a dog 
as he scampered gaily away from the sound of 
her voice and wonder how in the world she was 
going to be able to cope with him and make him 
responsive and obedient, when the little demon 
would have none of her and mocked at all 
commands! Could she have banished James 
and Roy, the matter would have been simple 
enough. To train Toby alone would not have 
been so difficult. To train Toby, James, and 
Roy was a task. It meant cultivating and 
trusting to superior intelligence, if she were 
to hold her own. So in quiet desperation she 
sent off for all the books procurable on the 
fox terrier and how to manage him. 

When these came, she gave up her ostensible 


Toby 


43 


oversight of Toby for the time being, while 
she pored over them in the secret of her chamber, 
seeking for light. Carefully she read — then 
pondered long over all that men expect a little 
fox terrier to be and to know. She learned for 
the first time what he stands for in the world of 
sport and where she would be justified to con¬ 
trol and where it would be most unjustifiable. 
Something had indeed been radically wrong, 
and the wrong had not been entirely with 
James or Roy or Toby. 

Small wonder indeed that James and Roy 
had pledged themselves to defy her so long as 
she persisted in her efforts to enforce laws that 
were opposed to the laws of a fox terrier’s nature. 

She had been made to feel the undercurrent 
of their sullen resentment the time she had 
shut Toby up so that he might not heed the call 
of the woods. Roy had circled the house and 
barked his irritation in vain. James had hoed 
gloomily and steadily in the garden all that 
glorious afternoon. And like other ignorant 
persons she had plumed herself upon her firm¬ 
ness, her wisdom, her understanding! That 


44 


Toby 


three ardent spirits were languishing and un¬ 
happy only added a certain zest to a situation 
which was made up, to be honest, of those 
homely old sayings: “what’s sauce for the 
goose” and “turning the tables” and the 
“wheel goes round.” 

Repression of joy in others is a joy second 
to none if you are sure of the righteous ground 
you stand upon. There is an assurance of 
surpassing virtue in it — when you are a person 
of convictions. But conviction is so seldom 
based upon actual knowledge; and convictions 
have such an uncomfortable way of slipping 
away from you as you attain to knowledge; — 
and then, when you learn, for instance, that a 
fox terrier was created to dig in the earth, and 
to destroy woodchucks and all sorts of vermin 
such as rats and mice, instead of staying in the 
house to be a nice little lap dog for you, you feel 
that repression has been a crime, and you 
would like to apologise to your dog. 

You utterly refuse to apologise to James or 
Roy, however. It would be an even thing be¬ 
tween you and Toby, and doubtless because 


Toby 


45 


he is a dog he would love you just the same even 
when you make mistakes. But for dark con¬ 
spirators like James and Roy, who defy you, 
and encourage your little dog to defy you, and 
try to win him away from you, and make it 
three against one — there are no apologies ! 

Towards James and Roy the stern repressive 
spirit still burned with watchful, suspicious 
fire. 

After the girl found out what Toby and James 
and Roy had known all the time — as a matter 
of instinct, no doubt — that Toby was made for 
the woods and the woods for him, she saw that 
she must face the fact that this warrior spirit 
could not rightfully be curbed, except when it 
directed itself lawlessly and indiscriminatingly 
against chickens and cats. 

It took years of patient training to make Toby 
understand why cats were different from any 
other so-called vermin. If the badger and fox 
and rabbit and woodchuck and pole cat — alas ! 
three times in his life did he have an encounter 
with a pole cat, thoroughly loathing himself 
for weeks thereafter — and the chipmunk and 


46 Toby 

muskrat and raccoons and rats were all his 
legitimate prey, why not the cat, for whom, 
of all creatures that ran before him, he had a 
particular and especial aversion ? 

Chickens were tiresome creatures. He was 
easily persuaded to abandon chickens to some 
other fate. But just to look at a cat made him 
open his mouth and bring his teeth together with 
a sharp, ominous click. This, if he was under 
the oppressive influence of your awful eye and 
reminded by a warning voice that to kill a cat 
was taboo. But if he had given chase before 
you could speak — before you could command 
obedience — the end had come for pussy. 

How could he learn to discriminate ? And 
yet in time, as age mellowed him, and he became 
more understanding, he learned even that. 



If Raccoons and Rats were Legitimate Prey, why not 
the Cat ? 
















Maeterlinck in his little classic, Our Friend the 
Dog, muses upon all a dog has to learn in the first 
six months of life. “How many orders, dangers, 
prohibitions, problems, enigmas has one not to 
classify in one's overburdened memory! And how 
to reconcile all this with other laws, other enigmas, 
wider and more imperious, which one bears within 
one's self and within one's instinct, and which 
spring up and develop from one hour to the other, 
which come from the depths of time and the race, 
invade the blood, the muscles and the nerves, and 
suddenly assert themselves more irresistibly and 
more powerfully than pain, the word of the master 
himself, or the fear of death? ... It is a long 
work to organise a happy existence upon the border¬ 
land of two such worlds as the world of beasts and 
the world of men." 

“ There is not any creature irrational more 
loving to his Master, nor more serviceable than a 
dog, enduring blows from his hands, and using no 
other means to pacify his displeasure than Humilia¬ 
tion and Prostration: and after a beating turneth 
a Revenge into a more fervent Love." 

— Cox’s The Gentleman's Recreation, 1677. 


“It is just this rage for consideration that has be¬ 
trayed the dog into his satellite position as the friend 
of man. The cat , an animal of franker appetites , 
preserves his independence. But the dog , with one 
eye ever on the audience , has been wheedled into 
slavery , and praised and patted into the renuncia¬ 
tion of his own nature. Once he ceased hunting 
and became mans plate-licker the Rubicon was 
crossed” — R. L. Stevenson. 

“A weel-bred dog gaes oot when he sees them 
preparing to kick him oot.” — Scotch proverb. 


CHAPTER III 

“To be a high-mannered and high-minded gentleman, 
careless, affable, and gay, is the inborn pretension of the 
dog.” — R. L. Stevenson. 



|AETERLINCK, speaking of his little 
Pelleas, a French bulldog who died 
when six months old, says, “Was 
it surprising that Pelleas often ap¬ 
peared pensive in the face of these numberless 
problems, and that his humble and gentle look 
was often so profound and grave, laden with 
cares and full of unreadable questions ? ” 

Not so with Toby, however. As Minerva 
was said to have sprung forth from the head of 
Jupiter completely armed, so Toby seemed to 
have come into the world. There was such 
preparedness and awareness in every look and 
action — moreover, he was so perfectly equipped 
for what he had to do, and so ready, so joyously 
eager and ready to do it, that he would not have 
known how to look pensive, he had so much to do. 


49 






50 


Toby 


As for the problems of existence, for Toby 
there was but one. It was his fate to belong 
to a woman, and his business — and that became 
his problem, too, sometimes — to outwit her 
whenever and wherever he could. 

Often the girl to amuse herself would watch 
Toby out of the corner of her eye, suspecting 
him of intent to deceive, knowing by his very 
manner what was in his mind. He had all a 
man’s ways then, had Toby. He would be 
visibly longing to get away from her. She 
bored him. She was too slow, too stupid, too 
positively uninteresting, yet alas ! frequently 
she held him by a chain, — a real chain, not a 
moral one for Toby. Times without number 
had she had him on a leash and he never knew 
when she might not do it again. So it was 
well not to arouse her to action. It is almost 
necessary for even a hero to sneak sometimes 
when he wants a little freedom from tepid 
domesticity. But first he must lull all sus¬ 
picions to sleep. That, too, is a matter of prime 
necessity. So Toby, with true masculine blind¬ 
ness to the beauty of opportuneness, nay, its 


51 


Toby 

indispensability, if you would successfully deceive 
a woman, would be startlingly affectionate with 
this mistress of his, and then having put her 
in a pleasant mood, he would softly, politely, 
and determinedly sneak away from her. 

And sometimes this mistress of his would 
let him believe he had fooled her — it was so 
intensely and humanly interesting to watch his 
tactics. He, who would ordinarily dash through 
the house and out again with the noise of a 
charger, now could be seen lifting one stealthy 
paw after another. High up in the air he lifted 
them, bringing them down again without a sound. 
Cautiously and noiselessly he would steal slowly 
by her, she pretending to be oblivious to all 
things except her book. Down the steps of 
the porch he would go in the same slow, stealthy 
fashion, accelerating his pace somewhat as he 
struck the silent grass. Across the lawn he 
would slide like a little white wraith, until he 
reached the road — the woods road that led 
to his ultimate desire. Then, flinging caution 
gaily to the winds, off madly he would tear to 
his beloved haunt, the woods. 


52 


Toby 


And what a woods it was for a little fox 
terrier to cavort in ! A woods of hemlock and 
cedar trees, of oaks, maples, elms, of ash trees, 
black and white and red; of azalea bushes, 
huckleberries, and wintergreens. Here lady’s 
slipper and Indian pipe were found. Here, 
too, on the part that was swamp, underneath 
the thick shade of the trees — shade so thick 
that all summer long never a sunbeam pene¬ 
trated — here acres and acres of tall ferns grew. 
There were old trees in these woods that had 
fallen down, and young saplings growing straight 
and slim. And dead trees there were, too, that 
stood upright still — bare, bleak, and desolate 
they stood, seeming to mock at death, and in 
their sapless and decaying trunks wild things 
made their home. Along the outer edge of 
the woods choke-cherry trees sprang up, and 
the wild grapevine was everywhere, hanging in 
luxuriant festoons from tree to tree. The road 
skirting this edge of the woods was bounded 
on the other side by a crooked rail fence, 
whose corners were filled with a tangled growth 
of wild raspberry and blackberry bushes. Here, 


Toby 


53 


also, the elder bush pushed its sturdy way. A 
few scattering trees were on this side of the 
road, too, that seemed to be stretching out their 
arms yearningly to their friends across the way, 
until finally they met and mingled their leaves 
with theirs far, far above our heads. 

In the spring of the year every wild flower 
that blows could be found in these woods. And 
trilliums red and white, and long-stemmed vio¬ 
lets blue as the sky itself, nestled along the 
banks at the side of the road. 

Then in the autumn when the cool, dark 
shade had lifted, the woods road was transformed. 
Far through the tall trees now you could look, 
where the sun made glancing shadows. And on 
each side, wherever the eye could reach, the woods 
road was ablaze with sumac and goldenrod and 
purple aster. 

Did Toby feel any interest in these things, or 
was the only lure the woods held for him con¬ 
cealed in the hollows of those sombre and 
melancholy trees, where woodchucks, rabbits, 
chipmunks, raccoons, squirrels, and countless 
other wild things were wont to find a refuge ? 


54 


Toby 


One wonders ! He might have cast an appreci¬ 
ative eye on all that beauty as he dashed along— 
possibly it sank into his soul as it sank into ours, 
giving to him as to us sheer speechless delight. 

But in those days, it must be owned, Toby 
gave no evidence of being anything but 
a bloodthirsty little villain. And because 
every man is a bloodthirsty savage, too, way 
back in the remote recess of his being, Toby 
for his gaminess and pluck won friends on every 
side. Even the male member of the family, 
outwardly so genial, courteous, and kind, and 
so tenderly considerate of all things weak, — a 
man to whom any savagery or brutality would 
be peculiarly abhorrent, you would think, — 
even this adored male member became unmasked 
before us, as we strolled up the woods road one 
day when he was home on a visit. 

Just as we reached the entrance to the woods, 
we came upon the freshly killed bodies of two 
large woodchucks — father and mother wood¬ 
chuck, we made no doubt — when a few steps 
farther along we saw an agonising cluster of 
five or six little woodchucks all dead! 


Toby 


55 


Toby’s mistress was ready with a thousand 
apologies. Toby’s youth was one of them. That 
she hadn’t finished training him was another. 
But when she saw a broad smile spread over the 
face of this kind and loving-hearted man, and 
a certain eager and indefinable springiness 
come into his step as they walked on, she de¬ 
sisted, and followed sorrowfully, with a heart 
like lead, pondering over many things. 

Three times on that two-mile walk was that 
gory scene repeated ! Toby, like a true sport, 
in no way boasted of his victories, but leaped 
light-heartedly along, warily alert, looking this 
way and that for more. 

“Ginger ! that’s a dog !” the man exclaimed, 
and afterwards he and James became as one 
man, or rather like two boys together in their 
glee over Toby’s prowess. 

Toby’s mistress, the one who owned him, was 
the only one who blushed for him. Her emo¬ 
tions, poignant as they were, however, only en¬ 
dured so long as she was going through the 
humiliating process of being reconstructed her¬ 
self. The truth was, although ostensibly she 


56 


Toby 


it was who was training Toby, yet all unwittingly 
— she confesses it reluctantly — she was being 
trained herself. It is surely rather severe train¬ 
ing, if you are a woman who is opposed to 
killing things, to have to do with a hero born, 
whose every instinct is for battle. To curb her 
desire firmly, assiduously, and systematically 
to train his love for fighting out of Toby, re¬ 
quired self-restraint, enlarged vision, and a 
complete shifting of ideals. Real, honest, en¬ 
thusiastic admiration for a skilful killer would 
always be beyond her, but in time she learned 
to be philosophical about having a killer in 
the family. Having adjusted herself to this, 
she slid down the scale of righteousness still 
farther and admitted that bloodshed in a worthy 
cause — well, it has to be ! Much as she might 
pity the woodchuck, she had not the eloquence 
of the youthful Webster, and James, the farmer, 
and the dictionary itself were all for Toby. 
“The woodchuck or ground-hog burrows ex¬ 
tensively and is very destructive to crops.” 

It was no use imagining the consternation of 
the woodchucks who had lived, flourished. 


Toby 


57 


marauded, and died unmolested all these hun¬ 
dreds of years. It was on the dial of fate. 
Their hour had come. 

Nevertheless it is doubtful if all the knowledge 
she was acquiring on the ways of the fox terrier 
was half so illuminating as James’s expressive 
back. 

As time after time her little dog came home 
to her bleeding and torn after a mighty combat 
in the woods, came home to her to be bathed 
and have his wounds dressed, her resolution 
would spring up with new vigour to forbid 
the woods. It never failed that when she gave 
voice to this, across the distance somewhere 
she would get a glimpse of James’s back. The 
very set of his shoulders was a mute but 
emphatic protest. Never was a healthy hu¬ 
man scorn of ignorance, stupidity, and 
womanish fears combined, more eloquently 
expressed than by that silent back of James. 
It told her plainer than words that if she at¬ 
tempted to restrain Toby, once more she would 
be entering upon an unequal contest — that 
James would connive against her secretly 


58 


Toby 


and determinedly — that he had sworn to him¬ 
self that no woman, even if she did own him, 
should make a parlor pet of a dog like that. 

All this James’s back said to her. Yet only 
once did he so far forget himself as to express 
it in words. This was much later, however, in 
Toby’s career, and the occasion was one of 
Toby’s mightiest battles. 

All this time, until she became thoroughly 
trained into a reasonably broadminded and 
tolerant human being, Toby’s feelings for his 
mistress remained curiously mixed ones. For 
the matter of that, he never made the slightest 
secret of the fact that had he had the disposal 
of himself he would have belonged to James in 
preference to any other human being. As it 
was, heart and soul he was his, although re¬ 
luctantly, as a matter of form only, he was 
obliged to give allegiance to another. There 
is no doubt whatever that Toby thought women 
a nuisance in a gay young fox terrier’s life, and 
to be owned and controlled by a woman — unless 
she was the right sort — was ignominy itself. 
Indeed to yield obedience to a tame and un- 


Toby 


59 


interesting woman, with a vile habit of nagging, 
moreover, and of watching every step you take, 
was to do violence to every instinct of his being. 

Many arguments did he and that mistress 
of his have in those young days on the question 
of discipline and obedience. Upon very serious 
occasions they would argue it out upstairs in a 
room alone behind closed doors. Under the 
awful conjunction of closed doors and a reproving 
voice uttering solemn truths regarding the 
ethics of conduct, this gay, impertinent little 
rascal would become as limp as a dish rag with 
only just enough life in him to crawl under the 
bed. Then the real tussle began, to make him 
come out without coaxing him. And the length 
of time before this could be accomplished 
depended entirely upon how demoralised he was 
by shame. They never left that room in those 
puppy days until he had learned the lesson again 
that in the eyes of this undesired mistress of 
his obedience in a dog stood high. 

Thus his respect for her grew. And when he 
heard the sound of the whistle that is lodged 
in the handle of a dog whip, if memory were still 


60 


Toby 


fresh of what disobedience to that whistle usually 
entailed, he would come like a shot. But if he 
were sufficiently out of sight, though not of 
hearing, the odds were still on the side that his 
memory would be as absent as his little body 
would shortly be. 

Truth to tell, Toby’s only real use for her 
in those early days was when he needed someone 
to bind up his wounds. Then, like any warrior, 
he turned to a woman, and then, it must be 
owned, Toby liked the old-fashioned, non-mil¬ 
itant kind — the kind that is willing to stay at 
home with bandages and liniment ready. The 
tear of sympathy, too, that falls as the wound is 
dressed is a tribute no hero disdains after the 
battle is over. And so Toby’s mistress learned 
to know her place — to know what kind of a 
woman heroes need, and when she was wanted 
and not wanted. And to know that is to be 
a wise woman indeed, and by the time she had 
learned all this, her education as well as Toby’s 
was nearly complete. 

And thus as she grew in knowledge of the 
ways of dogs and men, Toby grew less resentful 


Toby 


61 


over having to belong to a woman. Quite 
often now you would have said, could you have 
seen him with her, that he really loved this 
mistress of his. And she, instead of shrinking 
and protesting, began to feel curious little thrills 
of exultant pride over the way Toby could fight, 
and the stoical, uncomplaining way in which he 
took his punishment. 



Prize description of the Fox Terrier by E. Wel- 
burn. Quoted from R. Lee’s The Fox Terrier. 

“ The fox terriers are in two varieties , viz.: 
smooth-coated and wire-coated and with this excep¬ 
tion they are one and the same dog. The head 
should be long with level narrow scull , the under 
jaw deep , flat , and of sufficient length so that the 
teeth are level in the mouth; the eyes well set and 
of deep hazel colour with a keen determined expres¬ 
sion; the face should be well filled in under the 
eyes , and carrying the strength fairly well to the 
muzzle end. Ears small V-shaped and of fair 
strength , set well on the head and dropping down 
forward with the points in a direct line to the eye; 
the neck should be of a fair length , clean under the 
throat , gradually strengthening and gracefully set 
into the shoulders, which should be long and well 
laid back finishing clean and fine on top; the chest 
narrow and brisket deep with elbows placed well 
under; the forelegs should be absolutely straight 
with good strong round bone carried right down to 
the foot, which should be short with well-raised toes; 
the back short with strong loin , the ribs should go 
well back , be deep and well sprung , the set on of 
stern should be rather high and gaily carried , the 
full strength of the tail to be carried out from the 
set on to the end y and not curl or come too much over 
the back; the hindquarters strong and muscular 
and free from droop , thighs long and fair breadth 
with stifles not too straight and hocks near the 
ground , the movement of the dog should be level and 


straight all around and free from swing on the elbows 
or twirl of the hocks, the character of the dog 
greatly depending upon his appearance, which must 
be smart and sprightly, full of determination, at 
the same time clean in finish with a workman¬ 
like and gentlemanly appearance combined. Coat 
should be straight and flat, lying very close, dense 
and hard . . . weight should not exceed 18\ 
pounds; the colour most desirable being black and 
tan marked head with white body” 

“Symmetry, Size and Character. — The dog 
must present a generally gay, lively and active 
appearance. Bone and strength in a small com¬ 
pass are essentials; but this must not be taken to 
mean that a Fox Terrier should be cloggy or in 
any way coarse. Speed and endurance must be 
looked to as well as power, and the symmetry of the 
Foxhound taken as a model. The Terrier, like 
the hound must on no account be leggy; neither 
must he be too short in the leg. He should stand 
like a cleverly made hunter — covering a lot of 
ground, yet with a short back as before stated. He 
will thus attain the highest degree of propelling power, 
together with the greatest length of stride that is 
compatible with the length of his body. Weight is 
not a certain criterion of a Terrier's fitness for his 
work. General shape, size and contour are the 
main points; and if a dog can gallop and stay, and 
follow his fox, it matters little what his weight is to a 
pound or so, though roughly speaking, it may be 
said he should not scale over 20 lb. in show condition.” 

— The Fox Terrier, Hugh Dalziel. 


CHAPTER IV 


“ Men like dogs have an elaborate and mysterious 
etiquette. It is their bond of sympathy that both are the 
children of convention.” — R. L. Stevenson. 

OBY’S mistress, as her dog grew up, 
used to pore over prize descrip¬ 
tions of fox terriers and compare 
her Toby point by point. And it is 
very interesting reading, if you happen to own 
a fox terrier whom you think probably the 
most perfect thing in the way of a fox terrier 
that the world has ever seen. 

The more she read about the fox terriers in 
general, the more deeply satisfied she became 
with her own. He not only had character and 
temperament, this dog of hers, but beauty 
unsurpassed ! 

Then, as luck would have it, her eyes fell upon 
this: — 

“The nose, towards which the muzzle must 
slightly taper, should be black.” 

f 65 







66 


Toby 


Hastily she consulted another authority: — 
“The jaw should be muscular, and not too 
fine; and, of course , the nose should be black” 
She could only swell now with a mournful 
trying-to-cover-up-things sort of pride when she 
read that “the carriage of a good Terrier should 
be gay and lively, and the expression of the face 
intelligent and good tempered,” or that he should 
have a “keen determined look, high-bred poise, 
and proudly carried stern.” 

Alas for Toby’s mistress ! Toby’s nose had 
an afflicting pink streak across it. She could 
make his manners all that they should be, and 
a dog is moral or immoral as he obeys or dis¬ 
obeys. In shape, size, action, courage, temper, 
and growing affection he was perfect. But what 
booted every virtue known to dog — what 
was it to have “high-bred poise and a proudly 
carried stern” when you have an ugly pink 
strip across your nose ! 

Toby’s mistress found in another chapter that 
“a flesh-coloured nose being held objectionable,” 
some people had resorted to “faking.” A very 
reprehensible practice the book said; in fact it 


Toby 67 

condemned the whole system of faking as utterly 
contemptible. 

Nevertheless, she had fully determined to 
“fake” Toby’s nose, — it was not so much worse 
than for a woman to paint her cheeks, and all 
done in the cause of beauty, — when Toby 
saved her that trouble. First one little black 
speck and then another appeared on the 
surface of that objectionable pink streak. And 
these little black specks grew and grew and 
spread and spread until they met each other; 
and in due course of time Toby had a perfectly 
beautiful and absolutely correct black nose. 

And when that happened, life was utterly 
joyful for Toby and his mistress. 



















“ The Terrier . . . has rapidity of attack, man¬ 
aged with art and sustained with spirit; it is not 
what he will hear, but what he will inflict. His 
action protects himself, and his bite carries death 
to his opponent; he dashes into the hole of the fox, 
drives him from its recesses, or tears him to pieces 
in his stronghold; and he forces the reluctant, 
stubborn badger into light. As his courage is 
great, so is his genius extensive; he will trace 
with the Foxhounds, hunt with the Beagle, find for 
the Greyhound, or beat with the Spaniel. Of 
wild-cats, martens, pole cats, weasels and rats, he is 
the vigilant and determined enemy; he drives the 
otter from the rocky clefts on the banks of rivers, 
nor declines the combat in a new element —Syden¬ 
ham Edwards. Quoted from Hugh Dalziel’s 
The Fox Terrier. 

“At the annual festival of Diana, which was 
celebrated all over Italy on the thirteenth of August, 
hunting dogs were crowned and wild beasts were not 
molested. . . . Some light is thrown on the mean¬ 
ing of these customs by a passage in Arrian's treatise 
on hunting. He tells us that a good hound is a 
boon conferred by one of the gods upon the hunts¬ 
man, who ought to testify his gratitude by sacri¬ 
ficing to the Huntress Artemis. Further, Arrian 
goes on to say: ‘It is right that after a successful 
chase a man should sacrifice and dedicate the first 
fruits of his bag to the goddess, in order to purify 
both the hounds and the hunters, in accordance 
with old custom and usage.' He tells us that the 
Celts were wont to form a treasury for the goddess 
Artemis, into which they paid a fine of two obols 
for every hare they killed, a drachm for every fox, 


and four drachms for every roe. Once a year, on the 
birthday of Artemis, they opened the treasury, and 
with the accumulated fines, purchased a sacrificial 
victim, it might be a sheep, a t/oaZ, or a caZ/. Having 
slain the animal and offered her share to the Huntress 
Artemis, they feasted, both men and dogs; and they 
crowned the dogs on that day ‘in order to signifyf 
says Arrian, ‘ that the festival was for their benefit 
. . . The custom described by Arrian is good 
evidence of the belief that the wild beasts belong to the 
goddess of the wilds, who must be compensated for 
their destruction ; and, taken with what he says of the 
need of purifying the hounds after a successful 
chase, the Celtic practice of crowning them at the 
annual festival of Artemis may have been meant 
to purge them of the stain they had contracted by 
killing the creatures of the goddess. The same 
explanation would naturally apply to the same 
custom observed by the Italians at the festival of 
Diana . . . and for the same reason which the 
South Slavonian peasant assigns for crowning 
the horns of his cows with wreaths of flowers on St. 
George's Day, the twenty-third of April. He does 
it in order to guard the cattle against witchcraft. . . . 
Now when we observe that garlands of flowers, like 
hawthorn and other green boughs, avail to ward 
off the unseen powers of mischief, we may conjec¬ 
ture that the practice of crowning dogs at the festival 
of a huntress goddess was intended to preserve the 
hounds from the angry and dangerous spirits of the 
wild beasts which they had killed in the course of 
the year." — Frazer’s The Golden Bough. 

“One dog can drive a flock of sheep ."—Proverb. 


CHAPTER V 


“ Silvis aspera , blanda dormi — Fierce in the woods, 
gentle in the home.” — Martial. 

[E farmer, James, Roy, Toby, 
Blarney, everyone was happy in 
those exhilarating days. The woods 
rang with Roy’s and Toby’s bark 
from the first spring days until late autumn, 
when the snow settled down over everything 
and drove all life to cover. 

Toby would return from these expeditions 
with “proudly carried stern” and bark a joyful 
demand for admission. He was never known 
to ask, to beg, to cry, nor to whine. No, 
whatever Toby wanted he demanded sharply 
and imperatively, with enthusiasm, persistence, 
and unparalleled good nature. His mistress 
found out while he was still a puppy that Toby’s 
frequent success in getting the best of her, 
outwitting her, in short, lay in his vigorous 
and indomitable capacity for concentration. 



71 





72 


Toby 


Nothing could divert nor entice him from the 
thing in hand. No amount of persuasion could 
lead or drive his thoughts into any other 
channel. Whereas without persuasion, hers had 
a habit of flying far away from the thing Toby 
wanted and should not have, to something way 
beyond. 

Now he would return after the day’s sport was 
over, demand his dinner, — unless it was forth¬ 
coming at once, — submit with uncomplain¬ 
ing fortitude to antiseptic baths and the 
dressing of sundry wounds, digs, scratches, 
bites, and claws with which head and body 
might be liberally covered — probably were 
covered, if he had had a gay and happy day — 
and after that he was quite willing to be a loving 
little pet dog until bedtime. 

But alas, for the days — they were not many 
— when he came home without a scratch ! 
No lively, confident demand for admission 
was heard those days. A moping, dejected, 
little white dog would late in the day be dis¬ 
covered by someone, sitting disconsolately out¬ 
side with his back against the rear of the house. 


Toby 


73 


looking off into space. Dinner did not interest 
him. You did not interest him. Nothing in¬ 
terested him. He had tasted defeat. He felt all 
the unworthiness of a whole skin under certain 
circumstances, and a satiny smooth white coat. 

You might pet him and say soothing words, 
but there was no consolation to be derived from 
that. What was your empty praise, when he 
knew how some wretched creature of the woods 
had escaped him — had made a fool of him that 
day. Perchance had lured him on into a hole 
too small for him, and while he was digging 
his way, the wily, taunting little beast — some¬ 
thing other and more subtle than the wood¬ 
chuck — had gone into a subterranean passage 
that Toby had finally discovered, after wild and 
violent digging in which he had left mounds of 
dirt behind ; and at the very end of this passage 
he had seen, not the animal he was eagerly seek¬ 
ing — but a chink of daylight! No wonder he 
sat outside in rueful contemplation of an episode 
so wholly humiliating. Were it not that tears 
are unheroic, he could have wept for shame. 

The next morning after one of these trying, 


74 


Toby 


harrowing, sickening, disgusting fiascos of a 
day, you could count on it, Toby would be off 
without waiting to bid you good morning. He 
would have tipped the wink to Rob-roy Mc¬ 
Gregor and Blarney, and bright and early, 
if you were looking, you would see the three 
dogs strike into the woods road. The Three 
Musketeers were now in hot pursuit. 

Well did Toby know this little animal. He 
knew him by look, by scent, by size; by the 
stripe down his back, and by his long, sharp 
claws. No misguiding subterranean passage¬ 
way would save him this day. Not when he 
had sentinels to stand guard and watch, like Roy 
and Blarney. 

Here and there they plunged and scampered, 
Toby in the lead. Back and forth they went, 
Toby losing the scent, now finding it again. 
They would pass by woodchucks without a 
glance, leaving the woodchucks fairly dazed over 
their miraculous escape. On they went, until 
with a sudden, wild spring Toby had leaped 
upon his prey ! Before this tantalising foe could 
get into his hole, he had him ! And that he had 



The Three Musketeers 






75 


Toby 

eluded and hoodwinked him so craftily yester¬ 
day but lent additional fury to the attack 
to-day. This was a mighty and determined 
struggle, to which Roy and Blarney lent the help 
of their fierce and encouraging barks. And 
after it was over, Toby had left a vain and pre¬ 
sumptuous enemy lying stiff and stark weltering 
in his own blood, and would come bounding 
home, bleeding and happy, with tail straight up 
in the air. Joyously he would demand admis¬ 
sion. Indeed, he could hardly wait for you to 
get to the door so vociferous was he — and so 
hungry for his dinner. 

One hot summer day, when Toby was three 
years old, James, with his ear ever alert for 
sounds from the woods that might indicate an 
interesting scrimmage going on, heard that 
note in Toby’s bark that told him something 
far more exciting than dealing death to potato 
bugs was going on. 

There was a short cut he knew well that went 
from the garden down through the orchard to 
the woods. It involved a few fences to climb, 
which he took with long-limbed, muscular 


76 


Toby 


ease. An ease acquired from much practice 
in the last three years, for this short cut was 
now worn to a path that led from the garden 
wall down through the orchard as straight as 
an eager, fun-loving, Toby-loving boy could go. 
Straight as a die it ran down the orchard hill 
to the woods. Such a path might have been 
somewhat betraying to a curious and speculative 
mind. A mind able, for instance, to gauge 
how many potato bugs ought to be picked off a 
potato vine in a given length of time, by a 
boy of average industry. But the path was not 
near so betraying, in James’s opinion, as an 
open following of the woods road would have 
been. Besides, a wise lad is deeply prudent. 
One cannot hazard too openly even though no 
speculative minds are about. To arouse curi¬ 
osity or surmise is very unwise. To slip quickly 
down that secluded, unsuspected path and avoid 
disconcerting questions that might lead to 
interference, or at least to an annoying loss of 
time, was to be discreet. James, indeed, was a 
pleasant lad who liked to live in a pleasant 
atmosphere. He liked to encourage people’s 


Toby 


77 


trust in him. So for this reason, no doubt, he 
invariably leaped the garden wall in preference 
to taking boldly to the woods road. 

And so this day at the sound of Toby’s bark 
he ran down the path from the garden across 
the orchard, swung over the fence at the other 
end, and plunged into the woods. He hurried 
along, trampling on ferns and snapping twigs, on 
over the fallen trunks of trees, through the 
underbrush, through pools of water, and past 
hurrying, skurrying things that fled as they 
heard him coming. A snake glided by, almost 
touching his foot, but he never heeded. An 
oriole sang close by — he did not hear it. The 
air was full of the sound of woodsey things 
— he never noticed. Faster and faster he ran, 
guided by Toby’s voice and impelled to greater 
and greater speed by something in it that was 
fierce, desperate, and urgent. 

As he drew nearer, he heard, as if coming from 
the bowels of the earth, the rumble of continu¬ 
ous growls — growls that were cumulative, end¬ 
ing in a piercing bark that was now a bark of 
rage and again a bark of furious triumph. 


78 


Toby 


Breathlessly he reached the spot — a deep hole at 
the foot of a white ash tree — and still the sounds 
of a mighty battle continued, making the heart 
of a fight-loving boy leap fiercely responsive for 
joy. Just then the rear of a little white body 
protruded, tugging viciously at something larger 
by far than himself. The heat was intense, and 
as they came out of the hole gasping for breath, 
each paused for a whiff of that outer air, and then 
the battle was renewed again with fresh fury. 

It was a fight to the death this time. Neither 
combatant would quit until he had killed or 
been killed by the other. In opposition to 
Toby’s inveterate instinct for extermination, 
was the accumulated hatred of these wild things 
of the woods toward this persistent, relentless 
white creature that had terrorised and put them 
to death for three years. It was an even thing 
now which one would kill the other — so even 
that James, in a frenzy of anxiety for the life of 
his little favourite, seized a piece of wood and 
clubbed the raccoon over the head, stunning 
him so that he released his hold of Toby and 
lay as if dead. 


Toby 


79 


Knowing that with such a history to relate, 
not one of us would introduce a subject so 
banal and trivial as potato bugs, James picked 
up the ’coon by the tail and returned by the 
woods road this time to the house. As he came 
along Toby was leaping, growling, and snapping 
in unappeased fury at the ’coon, who began 
to show signs of life. And James had to stun 
the ’coon once more and discipline Toby as 
well, to prevent another fight then and there. 

Now when James asked for Toby’s mistress, 
wishing to show her triumphantly what her 
little dog was capable of in the way of a fight; 
ready to break loose for once into wild and 
vainglorious boasting of Toby’s courage; ready 
to extol, to praise, to go into each detail; having 
the raccoon in hand to show her, moreover, 
and thus give the fine and undeniable point to 
the story, — there were the gaping wounds upon 
the body of the ’coon to exhibit to her as 
final proof, and these wounds were so deep and 
so many that but for his spirit and the bitter¬ 
ness of his hatred the ’coon was near done 
to death, — with such a story, the most dra- 


80 


Toby 


matic of Toby’s young life, to James’s intense 
chagrin, this mistress of Toby’s, with all the 
inconsequence of a woman, dammed up his 
eloquence by refusing to listen, and would not 
even look at the raccoon, although he pleaded 
with her to do so. This mistress of Toby’s, as 
a matter of fact, could see nothing but Toby’s 
clawed, bitten, and wounded body, and in her 
distress she forgot all her training and burst 
into womanish tears. 

“I won’t have him encouraged to fight like 
this,” she stormed, picking up what looked like 
the tattered remnants of a dog, and beginning 
her heart-rending task of reconstruction. 

In vain James beseeched her again to look 
at the wounds on the ’coon. These were in¬ 
finitely more numerous and far worse than 
Toby’s, he assured her gloatingly. 

You could see he was wishing he had not in¬ 
terfered. The story would have been just that 
much longer and more full of ultimate glory for 
Toby, had he refrained. There wasn’t a doubt 
about it. Toby would have finished the ’coon, 
sure. But what was the use of talking about 


Toby 


81 


it with a lot of women who did not seem to 
know enough to appreciate the story, anyway? 

It was then in his disappointment that James 
so far forgot himself as to put into words all 
that his back had so often and so eloquently 
implied. There was a sombre glare in his eye 
and a contempt in his voice for Toby’s mistress 
that he made not the slightest effort to conceal. 

Flinging all respect to the winds, James 
spoke as if to the world at large. “Anyone 
ought to be ashamed to make such a fuss. 
Anyone ought to be proud to own a little dog 
like Toby. I believe he would fight a bear!” 

Toby’s mistress, realising only too well the 
personal rebuke that lay hidden under the 
impersonal anyone , meekly resumed her task of 
bathing and dressing the hero’s wounds. 

After she had carefully sponged off the blood 
and grime with which he was literally covered, 
and found to her relief that Toby still had 
two eyes unimpaired, that the slits in his ears 
would probably grow together, that no teeth 
were gone, nor apparently any bones broken 
in any one of his four legs — that his wounds, 

G 


82 


Toby 


in short, deep and ghastly as they were, were 
flesh wounds, that from long familiarity and 
practice, she felt herself perfectly competent 
to care for without the aid of a veterinary, 
Toby’s mistress became calmer. 

She even listened to James’s story, which he 
was forgivingly eager to re-tell, with all a 
woman’s strange mixture of pride and horror 
which is so inexplicable to man. 

James, neglecting nothing that would re¬ 
dound to the credit of his tale, had weighed the 
’coon while he was still stunned, and now he 
weighed Toby; reporting with a mighty air of 
satisfaction that the raccoon weighed twenty- 
two pounds and Toby weighed but nineteen. 

The wild, fierce, shy raccoon with his bright, 
untamed eyes recovered under James’s care, and 
James kept him for several weeks, hoping to tame 
him and make a pet of him. He kept him in the 
stable in a large wooden box with a strong wire 
netting over the top. And here James held court, 
graciously giving audience to a stream of boy 
visitors, who, having heard the story of Toby’s 
fight with the ’coon, wished to see the ’coon. 












I 


4 

























t 



















% 













/ 


















Tiie Raccoon crouching on a Limb far out of Reach 




83 


Toby 

These were glorious days for James, but they 
couldn’t last. The presence of the ’coon was 
too disastrous upon Toby. In truth, as long 
as the ’coon was there and still alive Toby found 
it utterly impossible to have a happy moment. 
He never took to the woods road now. He 
never knew what it was to feel triumphantly gay. 
And his temperament, formerly so full of la joie 
de vivre that a la mort to all his foes was merely 
a joyous incident, now became sullen and morose. 

For hours at a time Toby would lurk around 
that box in the stable, watching his chance to 
leap up on to the perilous wire netting. Once 
there, clutching and balancing uncertainly, he 
would look down at his foe in his safe retreat, 
and then in a perfect frenzy, accentuated by the 
fact that he could not stay there, he would 
jump down, and lifting his head, give vent 
to his exasperation in a prolonged and agonising 
howl of helpless rage. The only thing that 
dragged him away from the box was when 
James, who had managed to fasten a long chain 
around one of the ’coon’s legs, would let the 
’coon have a little freedom chained to a tree. 


84 


Toby 


Then Toby would spend his day under the tree, 
running back and forth and gazing up with re¬ 
doubled fury at the raccoon crouching on a limb 
above his head, far, far out of reach. Pantingly 
he would leap up on James’s shoulder for a closer 
view. He would run back and make flying leaps 
at the tree in his efforts to climb it, sticking with 
grim determination to the trunk a few feet from 
the ground until the weight of his body would 
be too much for mere grit and pull him down. 

As usual, Roy and Blarney were there, too, 
to give voice to their excited interest. But the 
misery at the sight of an unconquered foe was 
all Toby’s. From morning till night Toby 
brooded over the fact that that ’coon was still 
alive. He made it plain to everyone that his 
woe would endure with his life, unquenchable 
and unappeasable. Worse than anything else, 
however, and he made this fact clear as well, 
was the flaunting the ’coon in his face as a pet 
and something to cherish. This was an insult 
that he would resent with the last drop of blood 
in his body — just give him a chance. 

Toby became a misanthrope, of paranoiacal 
tendencies. He had but one thought, and that 



Trying to climb a Tree to get the ’coon 








Toby 


85 


of how he could get at the ’coon. He ceased 
to lavish any affection upon Janies. In fact 
he had none for anyone. And he made James 
as unhappy as himself. He made him feel 
that he had been unsportsmanlike in the be¬ 
ginning when he had interfered, and that now 
he was rubbing it in — rubbing it in intolerably 
in a way no true sport would stand. 

He wore on us all to such an extent by his 
state of unalterable, savage dejection, that 
finally James gave the ’coon away. 

The next morning Toby smelled around the 
’coon’s box as usual, and not finding him rushed 
wildly around under the trees, sniffing the air. 
There was no ’coon there ! Not a sight nor a 
trace nor a smell of him. He leaped back to the 
stable again, and after another excited sniff at 
the box, he looked up at James, sprang into his 
arms, licked his face with a warm and loving red 
tongue, forgave him everything, and tore off to 
find his partners. Having told them the story 
in some quick dog way, off they all went like a 
streak, Toby, Blarney and Roy, up the woods 
road, Toby leading, for a merry, old-time hunt. 



“ Hunting is a Game and Recreation commendable 
not onely for Kings, Princes , and the Nobility , 
but likewise for private Gentlemen; And as it is a 
Noble and Healthy Pastime so it is a thing which 
has been highly prized in all Ages. 

“ Besides , Hunting trains up Youth to the use of 
manly exercises in their riper Age , being encouraged 
thereto by the pleasure they take in hunting the 
Stately Stag, the Generous Buck, the Wilde Boar, 
the Cunning Otter, the Crafty Fox and the Fearful 
Hare; also the catching of vermin by Engines , as 
the Fitchet, the Fulimart, the Ferret, the Polecat, 
the Moldwarp and the like. Exercise herein 
preserveth Health and increaseth Strength and 
Activity. Others inflame the hot spirits of young 
men with wrong Ambition , love of War and seeds 
of Anger; But the exercise of Hunting neither 
remits the Minde to Sloth nor Softness , nor (if it 
be used with moderation) hardens it to inhumanity , 
but rather , inclines men to good Acquaintance 
and generous Society. It is no small advantage to 
be enured to bear Hunger , Thirst and Weariness 
from one's Childhood; to take up a timely habit of 
quitting one's Bed early , and loving to sit well and 
safe upon an Horse. What innocent and natural 
delights are they , when he seeth the day breaking 
forth those Blushes and Roses which Poets and 
Writers of Romances onely paint , but the Hunts¬ 
man truely courts? When he heareth the chirping 
of small birds pearching upon their dewy Boughs? 


When he draws in the fragancy and coolness of the 
Air? How jolly is his Spirit , when he suffers 
it to be imported with the noise of the Bugle-Horns , 
and the baying of Hounds , which leap up and play 
round about him / 

“ Then it is admirable to observe the natural in¬ 
stinct of Enmity and Cunning , whereby one Beast 
being as it were confederate with man , by whom he 
is maintained , serves him in his designs upon 
others. . . . Moreover is it not delightful and pleas¬ 
ant to observe the Docibleness of Dogs, which is 
as admirable as their Understanding? For as a 
right Huntsman knows the Language of his Hounds , 
so they know his , and the meaning of their own 
kinde, as perfectly as we can distinguish the voices 
of our friends and acquaintances from such as are 
strangers. 

“ Again , how satisfied is a curious Minde nay 
exceedingly delighted , to see the Game fly before 
him! and after that it hath withdrawn itself from 
his sight, to see the whole Line where it hath passed 
over , with all the doublings and cross works which 
the amazed and affrighted Beast hath made , re¬ 
covered again; and all that Maze wrought out by 
the intelligence which he holds with Dogs! this is 
most pleasant and as it were a Master-piece of 
Magic — Cox’s Gentleman's Recreation , 1677 . 

“One barking dog sets all the street a-barking 

— Proverb. 


CHAPTER VI 


“ Soon as Aurora drives away the night 
And edges eastern clouds with rosy light. 

The healthy huntsman with the cheerful horn 
Summons the dogs, and greets the dappled morn.” 


Gay. 



>T may be conceived that the merriest 
j hunts of all for the dogs were in 
the autumn when the trees in the 
!> woods were ablaze with crimson and 


golden glory, and the real hunting season for 
dogs and men began. The man of the family 
came with his gun, and he and other men with 
guns and dogs would tramp all day long through 
the woods, shooting pheasants, quail, and par¬ 
tridges. 

Upon these occasions, Blarney, the red Irish 
setter, became the leader of the valiant trio, 
dominating them naturally and unconsciously, 
by right of inherited instinct and training. 
Quite naturally, too, apparently, Toby yielded 


89 




90 


Toby 


his cheerful assent to Blarney’s superiority 
in this kind of work, and fell into the rank of 
an able, loyal assistant. 

There is no doubt whatever that Toby found 
this sort of hunting intensely interesting, too. 
The men, the dogs, the very sound of the guns 
going off, made it a festa for a hard working little 
fox terrier, who usually hunted burrowing down 
under the ground. This sort of hunting was 
gay, sociable, and exhilarating. In truth, it 
was play-time hunting for Toby and he enjoyed 
himself amazingly. 

It must be owned, however, that on these 
days of guns and men, the trio were but twain. 
Rob-roy McGregor, of spectacular courage, 
effrontery, and audacity, — the brilliant, dash¬ 
ing, fearless Roy, would be lying perdu in the 
darkest corner of the house, hidden away from 
the eyes of men — he tremblingly hoped so, at 
least. There he would lie all day in quaking, 
panting misery. 

The sight of a gun made him run. The smell 
of gunpowder made him sick. Fourth of July 
was a day of accentuated, reverberating horror. 


91 


Toby 

And as for thunderstorms — they were indeed 
the vengeance of the Almighty from whose 
awful wrath there is no escape. If he sought 
it in the cellar, it was not there. And if he 
bolted into a closet, it roared at him there. It 
was more consoling to be near some human 
being in a thunderstorm, and never on any ac¬ 
count to permit one’s self to be left in a room 
alone. 

Someone, to illustrate the intelligence of 
the collie, tells of one who was possessed with 
the desire to take his naps on a bed in a certain 
room. Each time his master caught him on 
the bed, he would punish him. So effectual 
was this, that the collie could often be found in 
that room, to be sure, but sleeping innocently 
in some corner on the floor. Suspecting him, 
his master put his hand on the bed one day, 
and finding it warm, he punished the collie 
again. The following day, missing the dog, he 
tiptoed up the stairs to the same room, and 
entering stealthily, he found the collie standing 
with his fore-paws on the bed blowing on the 
spot where he had been lying , to cool it off. 


92 


Toby 


The veracity of this story might seem ques¬ 
tionable to some, but no one who has owned a 
collie could doubt its truthfulness for a moment. 

When not subdued by mysterious sounds that 
he could not understand, Rob-roy McGregor 
was full of collie mischief and impetuosity and 
took insolent delight in plunging out on the high¬ 
way, and barking furiously at all passers-by. 
His was the bold master mind on this exploit, 
Toby and Blarney falling gleefully in line. 
L'un pour tous , tons pour Vun. 

'■ Roy was rampantly unmanageable and dis¬ 
obedient, and so likewise were the others 
when he was the leader in charge. At these 
times neither commands nor fear of after 
punishment could prevent them from taking 
this dear delight. All barked — all plunged out 
at the passing foe. He might be, and often 
was, indeed, your next door neighbour, with 
whom you must live in peace. That he hated 
your dogs they knew as well as you did, and 
they never missed an opportunity to protest 
to him loudly and aggressively that the dislike 
was mutual. 


Toby 


93 


There are complications in life’s relationships 
for which dogs that bark and chickens that stray 
are largely responsible. And when you have an 
ungovernable and volcanic collie in your pos¬ 
session from whom you cannot command obedi¬ 
ence by the strength of your lungs, it behooves 
you to resort to subtlety and guile. All your 
fine discipline over your own dog vanishes, 
too, when Roy is in the lead. So more necessary 
than ever it becomes that you should set your 
wits to work for ways in which to reduce this 
turbulent, boisterous, obstreperous beast to a 
state of passable subjection, so that he, and you, 
too, may live a little longer in a world that is 
the pleasantest world you know. 

You are not unaware of your neighbour’s state 
of mind, you are keenly alive, too, to the fact 
that matters are reaching a crisis, and that it is 
of the utmost importance that your dogs should 
learn the polite and necessary art of dissimula¬ 
tion. But to conceal his likes and dislikes is a 
thing no dog can do. 

As you are pondering over the unpleasant 
situations that can be brought about by those 


94 


Toby 


who are overzealous for truth, a maxim of Lord 
Chesterfield’s comes to mind : — 

“Seek for their particular merit, their predominant 
passion, or their prevailing weakness, and you will then 
know what to bait your hook with to catch them.” 

Your mind swoops down on the phrase 
“prevailing weakness.” Undoubtedly Lord 
Chesterfield intended his maxim to apply to 
men, but why not with equal force to a dog ? 

To sit all day on your porch with revolver in 
hand seems the way out. To be sure, there is a 
violence in the idea that offends your taste, 
which is all for quiet, peaceful contemplation. 
And your neighbour, too. What would your 
neighbour think ? Might he not find it in¬ 
conveniently startling as well as pointedly 
unfriendly to hear the crack of a revolver 
each time he went by ? As for confessing to 
him the reason why — that you are doing it 
solely to preserve your harmonious relations with 
him — you would die first! So with a mingling 
of reluctance and relief you dismiss the revolver 
idea and try to think of some less betraying way 
of playing upon Roy’s “prevailing weakness.” 


9 5 


Toby 

Suddenly an idea conies to you ! The next 
day your neighbour is passing by, and Roy, 
with Toby and Blarney in full cry, makes one of 
his swaggering, dare-devil dashes, surcharged 
to the brim with the essence of intimidation 
and looking for all the world the picture of im¬ 
perial, rooseveltian courage. You are sitting 
on the porch with a box of torpedoes, purchased 
for the occasion, conveniently near at hand. 
As Roy starts down the driveway, you throw 
one on the floor with a bang. 

Before you can speak — much less laugh — 
you see a craven, cringing coward of a dog, 
tail between legs, panting at the kitchen door, 
the short cut to the cellar. And this trembling, 
quaking wretch is Roy — our bold, marauding, 
fighting buccaneer of only a moment before ! 
At this, you applaud yourself, instead of giv¬ 
ing the credit first, to Lord Chesterfield, where 
it properly belongs, and secondly, to your par¬ 
ents for having brought you up on his Letters 
and Maxims, pleasantly mixed with the Bible, 
Shakespeare, and JSsop’s Fables. You say all 
sorts of nice things to yourself. One can say 


96 


Toby 


things of this sort to one’s self, but beware of your 
own generous spirit which begs you to share this 
joy with another. Remember, no friend in the 
world, however fond, can reach the measure of 
your own self-esteem. If you wish to be loved for 
yourself alone, you must keep yourself to yourself. 

You commune with yourself then joyfully. 
Your mind ranges vaingloriously, seeking other 
channels of conquest, other and higher ways 
of applying Lord Chesterfield’s wisdom. You 
might conquer anyone. “Search out his ruling 
passion” or “prevailing weakness” — then ex¬ 
plode the right kind of a torpedo — it is simplic¬ 
ity itself! 

But for a Scotch collie the real torpedo put 
up in sawdust is the thing. 

It is not to be wondered at that Rob-roy 
McGregor hated them. He hated them with 
the savage, impotent hatred that the human 
bully feels for the truth. He hated more than 
all else, however, the taunting ridicule of those 
whom he had heretofore bullied and who now 
controlled him through his fears. He loathed 
the very sight of himself, too, with the conceit 


Toby 


97 


gone out of him. When uninflated by swelling, 
pompous pride, he was not nearly so handsome 
a dog — and he knew it. So he set his collie in¬ 
telligence to work. He reasoned that if he could 
get rid of the torpedoes he would be as big, im¬ 
portant, and handsome as ever. 

One day, to his joy, he saw on the deserted 
porch the box of torpedoes lying within easy 
reach on a chair. Craftily he bided his time. 
Like a conspirator he hung around till every¬ 
one— at least he thought everyone — had gone 
for a walk. He knew not that the one who had 
brought him to this state of unwilling sub¬ 
jection had happened to remain behind, and was 
watching him curiously through the screen 
door. This one saw him cautiously approach 
the chair, take the box gingerly in his mouth, 
carry it to the side of the road where he dropped 
it behind some bushes, while he dug a hole in the 
ground. Then carefully he dropped the box of 
torpedoes in the hole and buried it out of sight. 

Just then our neighbour from the farm above 
came along. With the pent-up animosity of 
weeks, Roy dashed around him, giving loud 

H 


98 


Toby 


tongue to his detestation. He would be a gentle¬ 
man of a dog no longer, he assured him. He 
would be what he was — a dog, and tell the truth. 

Bang on the tiled floor of the porch went a 
torpedo ! and there stood the arch-conspirator 
of all laughing at him, as with tail between 
legs, poor Roy fled away to the cellar. 

That there was an unlimited supply of tor¬ 
pedoes in the world was more than Roy’s 
collie intelligence could understand. And time 
and time again he would be caught carrying off 
a box to bury it, believing each time, we may be 
sure, that at last he had rid the world of this 
dangerous and explosive thing. But there was 
no such luck for Roy. Besides the ever present 
torpedo, Fourth of July came regularly once a 
year, the hunting season came every autumn, and 
thunderstorms with alarming frequency during 
the summer months. So that life for Roy was 
full of lurking dangers that darted out upon him 
unawares. He was the living exponent that if 
you have a “prevailing weakness,” it will be 
played upon, not only by those who have dis¬ 
cernment, but by countless unseen forces as well. 


“Le chien a huit caracteres. Celui d'un pretre, 
d'un guerrier , d'un agriculteur , d'un serviteur (?) 
tI'un voleur , d'un animal de proie , d'une courtisane , 
d'un enfant. 

“11 se nourrit comme un pretre; il est content 
comme un pretre; il est patient comme un pretre , 
il lui suffit d'un faible nourriture comme un 
pretre; tel est son caractere de pretre. Il va 
en avant comme un guerrier; [il va] devant et 
derriere le logis comme un guerrier; tel est son 
caractere de guerrier. Comme Vagriculteur il est 
vigilant et n'a pas un sommeil complet; [il va] 
devant et derriere le logis comme un agriculteur; 
tel est son caractere d'agriculteur. ... 11 desire 

I'obscurite comme un voleur; il . . . la nuit comme 
un voleur ... tel est son caractere de voleur. Il 
aime I'obscurite comme un animal de proie; il . . . 
la nuit comme un animal de proie ... tel est son 
caractere d'animal de proie. Il est amical comme 
une courtisane . . . tel est son caractere de courtisane. 



11 est dormeur comme un enfant; il est caressant 
comme un enfant, il a la langue longue comme un 
enfant, tel est son caractere d’enfant” 

— UEloge du Chien dans le Saint Livre du Ven- 
didad. Trans, by Avel Hovelacque. 

“ The leading distinction between dog and man, 
after and perhaps before the different duration of 
their lives, is that one can speak and the other cannot. 
The absence of the power of speech confines the dog 
in the development of his intellect. It hinders him 
from many speculations , for words are the beginning 
of metaphysic. . . . 

“ The faults of the dog are many. He is vainer 
than man, singularly greedy of notice, singularly 
intolerant of ridicule, suspicious like the deaf, 
jealous to the degree of frenzy , and radically devoid 
of truth” 

— The Character of the Dog, R. L. Stevenson. 
“An old dog does not bark for nothing.” — Proverb. 


ooo 


CHAPTER VII 


“Animals are such agreeable friends — they ask no 
questions, they pass no criticisms.” — George Eliot. 

FTER the torpedo cure for Roy, it 
seemed as if nothing more could 
be asked for — we had such well- 
trained, well-behaved, and loving 
dogs. Their days were days of purest joy here 
on the big farm. Theirs was the free, out¬ 
door, normal life which is a dog’s true life, sup¬ 
plemented by the love of man, which is the 
very breath of life to him. 

To be sure, Toby’s mistress might be upstairs 
engaged in any one of the numberless things 
that occupy the time of a woman of domestic 
tastes, when she would hear the not unexpected 
summons to come below and view the last 
harrowing state of her little dog. By this time 
she had become so accustomed to treating 
wounds of all sorts and kinds, and Toby had 
grown to lean so confidently upon her skill, 



101 


102 


Toby 


that this was all in the day’s happenings. A 
grimy, dirty, bleeding little warrior at the door 
at noontime or late in the afternoon, to be 
transformed a little later by his mistress’s 
loving care into an exquisite little gentleman 
with a clean, shining, white coat. This could 
always be reckoned upon as a part of the day’s 
work. This done, battles, scars, and wounds 
were matters of no concern to Toby, for bed¬ 
time is approaching and he wishes to remind 
you with all the blandishing ways of a dog that 
it is your custom — you may forget, but he 
never — ever since puppy days to give him at 
least three crackers before he goes to sleep. 
And sometimes, he tells you insistently, you 
have been known to give as many as five ! 

For a cracker he will go through every trick 
known to dogdom with the rapturous certainty 
that no heart in the household can resist him. 
Then still in the hope of two more than the 
customary allotment — possibly three more this 
time, who knows ? — he will look at you with 
bright-eyed expectancy for a moment, while 
he gauges your mood and your susceptibility. 


Toby 


103 


If your mind is foregathering on matters that 
pertain solely to human kind, he retreats sadly. 
But if he gets your attention and sees a certain 
indulgent, appreciative twinkle in your eye — a 
look that only a dog can bring forth — he will 
start in dashingly again, telling you with all 
a dog’s enthusiasm that this time he means 
to surpass himself — this time six crackers or 
none is the stake. 

Could Boswell’s Dr. Johnson have seen Toby 
stand, walk, whirl, and dance upon his hind legs 
for a cracker, he could not in justice have 
likened a woman’s preaching to a dog’s walking 
on his hind legs: “It is not done well; but 
you are surprised to find it done at all.” Toby’s 
finished performance must have won even Dr. 
Johnson’s heart, although one fancies without 
really knowing it, that dogs were not a weakness 
of Dr. Johnson’s. 

It was a cracker — by no means a biscuit — 
that appealed to Toby. His taste was all for 
the large, round, milk cracker that is put up 
in barrels and sold by the pound in the corner 
grocery stores and general stores, that flourish 


104 Toby 

in small towns all over these United States. 
It is a purely American product, this cracker — 
as American as pork and beans and pumpkin 
pie. And when a new barrel is opened and the 
crackers crisp and snappy, it is not to be wondered 
at that Toby should find them so greatly to 
his liking. No “biscuit,” however fashionable, 
could take a cracker’s place with him, and any¬ 
thing made by the National Biscuit Co. this 
little dog of inflexible tastes would sniff at 
with disdain. In truth, when he had been 
misled into standing on two legs for one of the 
aforesaid biscuit, he would make you feel, as 
he dropped it with cold disapproval, that he had 
asked for bread and you had indeed given him 
a stone. 

How our dogs treated the dog of a friend is 
a horrid story. One likes not to defile these 
pages writ in praise of dogs by recounting their 
weaknesses, their jealousies, their inhospitalities. 
One would like, indeed, to believe a dog above 
all human frailties. But if he were, he would 
not be so willing to abandon his own kind for 
anything so far beneath him as man. 



Blarney, Toby, and Rob-roy McGregor 







% 
























































Toby 


105 


Anyone who has supervised the bringing up 
of a fox terrier pup, is surely not unwarranted 
in feeling himself competent to cope with any 
manifestation of dogdom. In like spirit Toby’s 
mistress, without boastfulness, felt herself ca¬ 
pable in all ways, surgical and educational, even 
to that of wrestling with the agile and elusive 
flea. So when she offered to take care of a 
friend’s dog who was going to Europe for the 
summer, she did it with a large manner of calm 
assurance that follows successful accomplish¬ 
ment in any line. She pictured to her friend 
the delight her poor little city dog would feel 
when he struck these Elysian Fields, where he 
could roam at will with happy, welcoming 
friends of his own kind to greet him and show 
him about. Thus had Roy greeted Blarney, 
and thus, too, had Roy and Blarney received 
Toby with joyous acclaim. Toby’s mistress 
said nothing about fleas to her friend, but, 
having an experienced eye, after a glance at 
Trix, her fancy dwelt also upon the healthy, 
flealess condition in which she would return 
the dog to her friend when autumn came. 


106 


Toby 


Toby’s mistress, one might as well admit 
it, like many another ignorant person felt her¬ 
self inspired by a Great Call to do good unto 
others. From the time of her magnanimous 
offer until the arrival of Trix she had her lit¬ 
tle moment of benign self-appreciation over a 
worthy action to be done. The real missionary 
spirit was welling up, even if the object was 
only a heathen of a dog. With a bland conscious¬ 
ness of worthy thought and action, and full of 
confidence in herself, she went down the hill to 
the station to meet the train that was to bring 
Trix. The station master helped her to take him 
out of the box, she fastened the leash to his collar, 
and started back to the house. 

Trix was a black cocker spaniel of uncertain 
age, or as the French would say of un certain age y 
which means that he had passed the age when it 
would be discreet to ask any questions. Trix 
trotted gently along by her side, and as they got 
within approach of the house, Rob-roy McGregor 
came down the driveway to meet them. He 
eyed the small dog at her side, pricking up his 
ears in a suspicious way. He sniffed at him 


Toby 


107 


this side and that, quite undeterred by the com¬ 
mand to keep his distance. Warned by a gleam 
in his eye that was anything but a gleam 
of welcome, Toby’s mistress tried to waive 
him off and take Trix in her arms, but Trix, 
wise dog, was trying to run away, and before she 
could reach him, Roy had pitched on him, 
wounding him body and soul. 

Clearly this was not an auspicious beginning 
for poor little Trix. Help came running from 
the house at the sound of the fracas. Roy was 
punished as he deserved, and Trix’s wounds 
were bathed, and every effort was made to 
soothe his feelings, but nothing availed. Trix 
was old and wise and knew dogs much better 
then we did. The experiences of a long life had 
left him without the slightest confidence in the 
good-will of his own kind. And, to make mat¬ 
ters worse, as if it were not enough to have been 
shaken like a rat by one monster, he needs must 
find two more at the house lurking about to 
devour him. They were of varying size, to be 
sure, but all of one hostile mind. 

Trix knew that Toby’s mistress had but 


108 


Toby 


shown her own zealous and mistaken ignorance 
when she imagined that she had found the Key 
of Happiness for him. Not for a moment was it 
well for him to tarry in these much vaunted 
Elysian Fields. “Not dogs, but men, or better 
yet women for me,” sighed Trixie, and being a 
dog of character with quick perceptions, bal¬ 
anced by quiet determination, the moment op¬ 
portunity offered he slipped out, as noiselessly 
as a little black shadow, as someone was enter¬ 
ing through the screen door, and made off 
whence he came. 

The entire household gave chase, and you 
would not have believed that a cocker spaniel no 
longer young could have run so fast. Heedless 
of our calls of anguish, this little black mite 
loped steadily on. Hearing our frantic cries, a 
farmer on a load of hay leaped off and he, too, 
gave chase. But just as he got up to him, 
Trixie swerved from his encircling arms and 
started down the railroad track headed due east, 
the direction from which he had come. James 
followed him down the railroad track for two 
miles, running full speed, until he could run no 


Toby 


109 


longer, and still he could not overtake this 
fleeing guest of a dog, and finally he lost sight of 
him altogether. 

For a short time in her life Toby’s mistress had 
known the feeling of absolute bien-etre. She 
had felt herself perched upon the topmost 
pinnacle of unselfish joy. The love a man 
feels for his mistress cannot be compared to the 
love he feels for himself in those exalted moments 
when he contemplates himself as showing to 
others the great Light of Love that beams from 
his soul for their help and guidance. “ Mine 
only is the True Path to Happiness,” he pro¬ 
claims loudly, and his heart swells with love for 
himself. 

But if, like Toby’s mistress, he is not content 
with his own approval, but needs must sigh for 
the full glory of the approval of others, there is 
ever a Nemesis that brings him down. “Je 
suis gros Jean comme devant.” 

So swiftly was Toby’s mistress made to realise 
that the moment you plume yourself upon having 
knowledge which you are warranted in making a 
show of to others — and she thought she had full 


110 Toby 

knowledge of the ways of dogs — that moment 
are you laid low. 

Also he that prescribes a cure or a course of 
action without full knowledge, does a very evil 
thing. 

A human being who had been promised with 
such unction the way to happiness and peace, 
might have given the matter serious and hopeful 
consideration. He might, indeed, and doubtless 
would have wasted many months putting to the 
test another’s idea. But a dog has a surer 
instinct. It took Trix not twenty minutes of 
good hard thought, nay, not even more than a 
second, to see that it was his own idea he was 
to go by and not another’s, and that twisting 
his own perceptions about to suit another’s is 
a vain and foolish thing. 

For three or four days after Trix’s departure 
Rob-roy McGregor, Blarney, and Toby were 
ostentatiously neglected. Not only were they neg¬ 
lected,— they were treated with freezing reserve 
by Toby’s mistress. Every time she thought of 
Roy’s vicious attack upon poor unoffending 
little Trix she could have wept over the base 


Toby 


111 


deceit of him, concealing from her so long his 
evil nature. Toby, too, was no better. Nothing 
but not having had the chance had prevented 
him from doing his utmost to eat up the poor 
little visitor. He had stood up full length 
flattened against the screen door, glaring in at 
him with eyes that flamed an unholy and 
vindictive green. As for Blarney, he had been 
transformed into a beast of such ugliness 
that he was simply laughable. With his back 
humped up and upper lip drawn down and 
tucked in at the corners, showing his teeth, he 
had stood glowering in sullen rage at a poor 
wee little black dog not half his size. 

But Toby’s mistress found nothing to laugh 
at in a situation that was humiliating and 
disillusionising to a degree. Meaning to give 
her friend’s dog a beautiful summer, she was 
obliged within an hour of his arrival to compose 
a letter telling her she had lost the dog for her! 
The letter was humble, appealing, and tear 
splashed. Trix’s mistress was large-hearted, 
generous, and understanding. Moreover, she 
was by temperament invincibly optimistic and 


112 


Toby 


wrote confidently that a dog of Trix’s wariness 
and superior intelligence would not be run 
over by a train on the railroad track — that old 
haunting fear of Toby’s mistress — and that 
she felt sure he would find a home somewhere 
where people would be good to him, adding with 
the pride of every dog owner, that he was such a 
cunning, adorable little dog that no one could 
help loving him. 

It was a comforting letter, but nothing but 
finding Trix alive and well would ever lift the 
weight of remorse from Toby’s mistress. For a 
whole week she was a shattered, miserable, 
wretched creature. And then came a telegram 
that enabled Toby’s mistress to hold up her 
head again, not in pride, but in humble thank¬ 
fulness. It was from her friend, and read: 
“Trix at Mrs. C. A. Reynold’s, South Norwalk 
Road. Please get him and send him home.” 

Trix had indeed shown himself worthy in 
all ways of his mistress’s faith in him, when 
he ensconced himself there. Evidently when 
James lost sight of him he must have turned 
down the South Norwalk Road which ran a few 


Toby 


113 


miles cross country from us, and with a dog’s 
unerring instinct in such matters, if he is old 
and wise like Trix, he had selected the biggest 
and handsomest house on the Road and one 
without dogs or children. Many other houses 
had he passed on the way, but at this house he 
presented himself about eleven o’clock on the 
morning following his eventful call upon us. 
As his mistress predicted, he immediately won 
all hearts. Mrs. Reynolds had written con¬ 
scientiously to the name and address on his 
collar, but admitted that she would like to keep 
him forever, if his owner would only permit. 

The orders were, however, to send him home, 
and Toby’s mistress gathered the little chap 
into her arms, and he really seemed to know her, 
and drove home with us very contentedly. 

Roy, Blarney, and Toby had protested loudly 
when the horses had come around a little before 
sunset that evening, and they had not been per¬ 
mitted to follow. It was an unprecedented 
state of affairs, and our ears were harassed by 
their mournful howls as we drove off down the 
hill. 

i 


114 


Toby 


That was not all, however, for Toby, Blarney, 
and Roy. When we returned and they began 
to give us a dog’s glad greeting, quick and 
ready to forget all wounds and injuries, in¬ 
stead of the usual cheery response, they heard 
themselves told sternly to go away. And then 
they saw Toby’s mistress get out of the buck- 
board with that hateful little black upstart 
cuddled close in her arms ! At the sight of 
Trix looking down at them in a safe and superior 
way, their rage knew no bounds. 

And there was yet more for Blarney, Toby, 
and Roy to endure. All the remainder of a warm 
summer’s evening, they, in their own home, had 
to stand on the outside of the screen doors and 
watch their own people pet another dog, make 
much of him, talk to him, and call him all sorts 
of cooing names. They had to stand there, 
powerless to interfere, and see him lap up saucer¬ 
ful after saucerful of rich sweet cream — their 
cream; but what was the most afflicting sight 
of all, they had to see Waverly crackers, delicious 
Waverly crackers, almost forced upon him until 
it is a wonder he did not die ! 


Toby 


115 


Then to give 'the finish to an agonising even¬ 
ing, they saw Toby’s mistress pick him up 
when bedtime came and take him upstairs with 
her without saying as much as good night to 
them. 

No one in the family had a word or a cracker 
for them. And that night they, who usually 
slept in the softest places in the house, found 
cheerless beds of straw out in the stable. 

Who can portray the wonder and consterna¬ 
tion that must have filled their minds ! Did 
they realise that this was their punishment for 
having been rude to a guest ? If not, how 
forgiving they were ! After Trix had been put 
in his box and sent back to his mistress on the 
earliest train possible the next morning, joy¬ 
fully and excitedly our dogs leaped about us as 
we came up the hill from the station. All was 
forgiven. All was forgotten. As far as they 
were concerned, the Trix episode was closed. 

As for Toby’s mistress, she abandoned once 
and for all the role of playing Providence to 
others, although she is willing to admit that 
it offers you the sweetest emotions while it lasts. 


116 


Toby 


Of course the male member laughed when he 
heard of her ill-judged effort and told her she 
ought to have known that all dogs are jealous 
of other old dogs. Naturally they w T ould try to 
fight him off, being perfectly honest, and feeling, 
moreover, that it was quite unnecessary to have 
any deceitful parleyings or diplomatic delays 
when it came to dealing with each other. Had 
Trix been a puppy, they would have adored 
him. Thus wrote with conscious superiority 
the male member. And Toby’s mistress sighed 
and thought mournfully, “Dear me! How 
much men know.” 


“Surely this fact, this capacity of the lower 
animals to love, not only man but one another, is the 
most significant, the most deserving to be pondered, 
raostf important in respect to their place in the 
universe of all the facts that can be learned about 
them” — H. C. Merwin. 

“The peculiar and distinguishing unfitness of 
the dog to be anything less than the real companion 
of man and the object of his care is evinced by the 
generally undesirable condition of the street dogs of 
Western Asia” 

— History of the Dog, W. C. L. Martin. 

“ Dans VAvesta une du deux fautes pour les- 
quelles il ny ait pas a esperer de remission c est 
Vinhumation inconsequente de chiens et d'hommes. 
Nous lisons au troisieme chapitre du Vendidad: — 

“‘Si Von enfouit en cette terre des chiens mort 
et des hommes mort et que, deux ans durant Von 
ne les deterre pas — quelle est la punition, 
quelle est la penitence, quelle est la purification?* 
— A quoi Ahura Mazda repondit: ‘ Pour cela 


point de punition , point de penitence , potnJ de 
purification d i7 ajoute que ce sont des ‘ actions 
a jamais inexpiable 

“‘0 Createur! quel acte coupable commet celui 
qui donne une mauvaise nourriture a un chien 
gardien du betail ? ’ Ahura Mazda repondit: *11 
commet ce meme acte coupable que s’il donnait 
en ce monde corporel, une nourriture mauvaise du 
chef d'une maison de qualitS 

“‘Dans ce monde corporel 6 saint Zarathustra! 
le chien est parmi les creatures du saint esprit , 
celle qui vieillit le plus vite: ceux qui demeurent 
sans nourriture pres des gens qui se nourrissent. y 

“On voit bien que le chien doit y etre considere 
comme un auxiliaire dans la lutte contre Vennemi.” 
— Morale de VAvesta , L'Eloge du Chien dans le 
Saint Livre du Vendidad , Avel Hovelacque. 

“Give a dog an ill name and hang him.” —Prov¬ 
erb. 

“ There are more ways to kill a dog than hang¬ 
ing” — Proverb. 



CHAPTER VIII 


“Nae doubt but they were fain o’ ither 
An* unco pack an’ thick thegither.” 

— Burns. 

IE next event in the lives of Toby, 
Blarney, and Roy was the arrival of 
a new farmer with a young dog not 
a year old, that bore such a suspi¬ 
cious likeness to Rob-roy McGregor, especially 
in colouring and marking, that at a distance it 
was almost impossible to tell them apart. When 
you saw them together, however, you perceived 
that Sport was not so symmetrically built as 
Roy. He was lean, lank, and weedy, his tail was 
not set on so well, and his face was differently 
marked. He was still a puppy and full of puppy 
enthusiasm, and immediately attached himself 
to Roy, Blarney, and Toby and like the other 
famous trio, the Three Musketeers now be¬ 
came four. 

All day long they hunted the woods together, 
119 






no 


Toby 


and Sport could never get enough of it. Early 
in the morning he would be over coaxing Toby, 
Blarney, and Roy to be off with him. Some¬ 
times we would not see them again until night¬ 
fall and then they would be too tired to care for 
anything but to sleep. They were too tired 
from these long chases through the woods to be 
affectionate even, and it began to seem to us 
that since Sport came we really had no dogs. 

Formerly they appeared to know by some 
instinct when we were about to start for a long 
drive about the country, and rarely did they 
fail to be on hand waiting eagerly for us to be off. 
Indeed, the charm of the woods paled for them 
all, when compared to the joy of accompanying 
us on a drive. 

Roy and Blarney would run on ahead, looking 
back for us to follow, while Toby would jump 
into the buckboard, palpitating with delight, 
and with his forepaws dangling over the dash¬ 
board, and tongue hanging out, he would 
stand up the entire way. No persuasion could 
make him lie down, nothing could induce him 
to take his drive easily, as any pampered pet 


Toby 


121 


born to luxury should do. Nothing short of 
main force could make him stay in comfort 
and safety on the back seat, and as that in time 
grew fatiguing to Toby’s mistress, her restrain¬ 
ing hand would relax, and as it did so, Toby 
would bound over to the seat by James and 
thence down to his favourite and perilous posi¬ 
tion. Several times in going around sharp 
corners he had fallen out, but that made no 
difference to Toby. Time had taught us that 
Toby’s concentrated purposes could not be 
disturbed or shaken by any casualties except 
death itself. That he loved above all else to go 
with us, his prolonged howls of misery attested 
whenever he was left behind. 

Yet now we took our drives day after day with 
no dogs scampering joyously across the fields and 
back again to us, nor was there a little white dog, 
with red tongue hanging out, leaning as far as he 
could get over the dashboard, as if he believed he 
was driving the horses or in some way making 
things go. 

A drive after a gay little team of horses 
through a stretch of wooded, rolling country, 


122 


Toby 


when the summer is still fresh and young, is 
worth all the automobile rides going. But to 
have it utterly perfect there must be a dog or 
two chasing on in front, and ever and anon dash¬ 
ing back, just to tell you, as only a dog can tell, 
what a beautiful and joyous place is this world of 
ours — and that you are what makes it so in his 
eyes, and to you he is eternally grateful. Seeing 
him thus, there comes over you such a feeling of 
well-being that before you know it, you, too, are 
lifted into a region of pure unspeculative, un¬ 
thinking joy ! The world is a good place. 
Your dog has told you so. 

All this, having once had, we sadly missed. 
Day after day that summer we took our drives 
sedately and soberly alone. A sort of dismal 
torpor settled over our spirits, we hardly knew 
why. 

One day we were driving along rather solemnly 
about ten miles from home, when James broke 
the quiet by suddenly stopping the horses, 
and standing up in the carriage, he pointed with 
his whip to the top of a hill beyond, saying ex¬ 
citedly, “There are our dogs !” 


Toby 


123 


We had just time to see them disappearing 
from view over the brow of the hill — going, we 
knew not where, and utterly unconscious of our 
vicinity. It is hardly necessary to say that the 
drive that had been rather solemn before was 
now superlatively so. 

All these years our dogs had been happy, 
leading the life of the woods, — the free, outdoor, 
happy, hunter life. Now under the leadership of 
a headstrong, undisciplined, vagrant dog they 
had become vagrants, too, scouring the 
country lawlessly and doing — what ? What 
were they hunting so tirelessly ? What do a 
pack of dogs find to do, we asked each other 
uneasily, so far away from home ? 

We had grown lax. We had believed that the 
years had brought wisdom and that since the 
value of the torpedo as a corrective had been 
discovered, a dog’s millennium was at hand. 
As a matter of fact, we had been like all trusting, 
believing, credulous women — with the usual 
result. 

“They are just natural born strayers,” Toby’s 
mistress ejaculated in a tone of disgust. 


124 Toby 

All thought she meant the dogs, and so she 
did, of course. 

Without further revealing she continued to 
muse to herself. Her heart was sore within her, 
for she had thought her training of Toby had 
made him a dog to be trusted. A woman to 
succeed with dogs or men — her thoughts ran 
comprehensively and decisively — must be up 
and doing all the time. Let her not think she 
can relax her vigilance over the best of them — 
and Toby is certainly a dear — feeling that 
at last they are perfectly trained. They never 
are. Such is their manifold nature that they are 
continually developing on new and unexpected 
lines. Here was confirmation of it before her 
very eyes ! Evidently with dogs and men — 
and this was the ultimate conclusion of Toby’s 
mistress after deep and painful reflection — not 
until they reach the last stage of decrepitude 
can a woman sit back and take life easily, feel¬ 
ing that her task is done. 

Vagrants ! Tramps ! The words sank 
heavily into our consciousness. We tried to 
keep our dogs at home. We tried to keep Sport 


Toby 


125 


from coming over. But in spite of locks and 
chains and all our watchfulness, one or all 
would at one time or another elude us, Sport 
would be waiting, and off they would go with 
him, to be gone for the rest of the day. 

They would come back, knowing they were 
in disgrace for their disobedience, and looking 
hang-dog, sullen, and tired, and acting as if 
they only cared to shun us and avoid meeting 
our eye. 

They were tramp dogs indeed, nor was it long 
before we learned the reason why. 

A farmer drove in one Sunday a little after 
noon, and we heard him haranguing James, who 
stood in the stable door looking white and 
miserable. He gesticulated violently towards 
the rear of his wagon where something lay, and 
as his voice grew louder and louder and more 
vituperative, we heard the words, “Your dogs 
and my sheep.” 

James motioned him to drive on to the house, 
and when we saw the mangled body of a full- 
grown sheep lying in the back of the farmer’s 
wagon, the ominous story of what a pack of 


126 Toby 

dogs do so far away from home was revealed in 
all its horror. 

In heart-breaking silence we listened to the 
farmer’s story. Our dogs had been chasing and 
worrying his sheep all summer, he told us 
vehemently, and one of the dogs was a perfect 
demon. Sometimes he would come alone, some¬ 
times he would bring one or two of the others, and 
again all four would come. As if fearing we might 
try to deny that our dogs were the culprits, he pro¬ 
ceeded to describe them. There was a bird dog, 
two shaggy coated dogs so near alike he could not 
tell one from the other, and a little white dog who 
came sometimes, but not so often as the others. 
“ He was too small anyway to do any harm,” 
he added, dismissing Toby contemptuously. 

Toby’s mistress shuddered. Little did he 
know the punishment that lay in Toby’s jaw. 
Yet he might have gone as an interested specta¬ 
tor, just as at the hunting season he would go 
with Blarney for the sole and delightful pur¬ 
pose of being sociable. She breathed a fervent 
prayer that the acquittal so willingly extended 
might be a true verdict for Toby. 


Toby 


12? 


Breathlessly, our hearts like lead, we waited 
for him to go on. Everyone knows that here is 
a matter for which there is no extenuation. If 
his story was true, no excuse could be pleaded, 
— no clemency granted. 

We must have looked our grief and heart-sick 
alarm, for the anger in the farmer’s voice died 
out a little, and he explained hastily that although 
they had pestered and annoyed him almost to 
death, they had never done any actual harm 
until to-day. 

“This morning,” he continued more quietly, 
“my man was away, and I was just coming home 
from church, when as I drove in the yard, I saw 
two of your dogs, the little white one and one of 
the shaggy coated ones, chasing my sheep up 
and down the field. I jumped out of my wagon, 
leaving the horse with one of the children, and 
picking up some stones started on a run to 
drive them off. I got there just in time to see 
the little white dog trotting off — he couldn’t 
do no harm, you know — but the big one had a 
sheep down and was just putting an end to him 
when he saw me coming, and skulked away. I 


128 


Toby 


picked the sheep up, now dead, and put it into 
my wagon and have brought it for you to see. 
I know they are pets, ladies,” he concluded, 
“and I hate to make you unhappy, but a sheep is 
a sheep, and I can’t afford to lose one.” 

Here was tragedy for us ! Here was the 
end of the brave musketeers — an ignominious 
end for one, if not for all. Our beloved well- 
trained dogs, Toby, Blarney, and Roy, had all 
been guilty of worrying and persecuting 
sheep, and there was a possibility that one of 
them had committed the worst crime a dog can 
commit. The crime that makes him a pariah 
among dogs and men and for which he must 
yield up his own life. For once a dog has killed 
a sheep, he is no longer fit to live. He has been 
false to his “great ancestral duty”— when men 
were shepherds all and the dog’s mission to his 
master was to guard and protect his flock. 
And from that early day to this no dog lives 
who does not realise in the innermost conscious¬ 
ness of his being the enormity of this offence. 
Once he starts out on this evil course, he cannot 
look you in the face. 


Toby 


129 


No wonder our dogs had kept away from us. 
None knew better than they the wrong they 
were doing. For a dog knows, too, that it is 
mischievous and wrong, if not absolutely wicked, 
for him wantonly and maliciously to chase a 
flock of sheep. 

None could deny that they had all been 
guilty of wrong, but the actual murder lay 
between dashing, blustering old Rob-roy Mc¬ 
Gregor and his left-handed offspring, Sport. 

Roy was mischievous, but was he so evil as 
to have done this cruel thing ? Who could tell 
how far he had been led astray ! He was home 
now, but we recalled that earlier in the morning 
he had slipped away, and as for Toby, there 
was no keeping him home. 

There was a lump in everyone’s throat as the 
farmer finished. 

Brokenly we told him that we would leave 
it all to him. He must decide, and whichever 
dog was guilty, he had the right to demand his 
life. 

Our farmer was sent for to bring Sport, the 
farmer alighted from his wagon, and the two 

K 


130 


Toby 


dogs were placed before him side by side, Rob- 
roy McGregor and Sport. 

Their likeness and yet their unlikeness as they 
stood there was never more noticeable. They 
were precisely the same size and each had the 
same white ruff, shading down the back and 
sides into black and gold and tawny reds. But 
there the similarity ended. The lower part of 
Roy’s face to his black tipped nose was white, 
while Sport’s face was brown all over. Roy 
was well-shaped, graceful, poised; whereas Sport 
lacked all the points that make a dog, a woman, or 
a man a thoroughbred. Roy looked at you with 
assurance, insouciance, mischief, and daring, 
and running through it all was love of praise 
and infinite love of you. The same mischief 
and daring looked out of Sport’s eyes, minus 
love for you or love of approbation. 

They both stood as if they knew well that 
they were on trial for their lives. Sport turned 
a cool, unwavering gaze on the farmer, and Roy 
looked up at him bravely, too, from out his white 
ruff. 

The farmer considered them carefully for an 


Toby 


131 


appreciable length of time, and then shook his 
head. “I can’t tell,” he exclaimed after an¬ 
other hesitating glance. “ They aren’t alike when 
you look at their faces, but I did not get close 
enough to see. It’s one of the two, but I don’t 
know which.” 

He turned away from the dogs to us and 
said gruffly that he didn’t suppose there was 
any use killing the wrong dog, and that if we 
would pay him the value of the sheep in money 
and watch our dogs, he wouldn’t press the matter 
any further. 

We breathed again. It seemed as if we our¬ 
selves had just escaped the gallows. 

“Make no mistake,” he warned grimly as he 
pocketed the money and got into his wagon to 
drive off. “ Whichever dog comes again to worry 
my sheep gets a bullet. Then we’ll know which 
one is the sheep-killer.” 

There was one, however, who knew without 
waiting for further proof. The farmer was 
scarcely out of sight before with swiftly accusing 
finger, the mistress of the house pointed at Sport. 
In spite of our farmer’s sullen protest that Sport 


132 


Toby 


was the best dog of the lot and a perfect wonder 
when it came to driving cows, this gentle woman, 
now roused to a fine state of indignation, issued 
her commands. He was to keep Sport tied up. 
He was never to come on our grounds, under 
penalty of death, nor would he be permitted 
ever again to associate in any way with our 
dogs. “Did our dogs ever do anything wrong 
before your dog came to tempt them?” she 
concluded. “ Sport is the sheep-killer. I know 
it.” 

You see, she believed in heredity, and good 
blood, and bad blood, and coming into the world 
right. And she knew that poor Sport, through 
no fault of his own, had some way got in wrong. 
And then everything went wrong. He fell into 
wrong hands. No one trained him. No one 
cared for him, and so he went on going wrong 
all through life, and leading others wrong. 

Her faith was sure. But for the rest of us it 
was an anxious time. If a dog was out of sight 
for a moment, we were terror-stricken, fearing 
that once having had the taste of sheep chas¬ 
ing, they could not break off. James had said 


Toby 


133 


boastfully that Toby would tackle a bear; why 
not a sheep, then, if size was any allurement ? 
His mistress’s confidence and pride in her one 
white stainless one had crumbled to the dust, 
and she used to murmur dolefully during those 
first days: — 

“ De chiens, chevaux, armes, amours, 

Pour un plaisir, mille douleurs.” 

We continued for the remainder of the summer 
to keep a close watch on our dogs, but as a 
matter of fact, with the leader in vagrancy in 
chains, they never attempted to stray beyond the 
woods; they were always around and waiting 
with eager joy to accompany us on our drives; 
indeed, the instant they were released from the 
domination of another’s will, apparently the 
evil spell had been broken, and they were our 
own faithful, devoted dogs once more. 

Alas ! one day in the late autumn, however, 
Sport managed to slip his chain, and whirled 
over and whispered to Toby, Blarney, and Roy, 
and before we could stop them, they were off. 

James started after them on a run. There 
were sheep, he knew well, a few miles distant 


134 


Toby 


in the direction they were going. Panting and 
breathless, he reached the top of a hill where he 
could look down upon a cuplike valley of rich 
fertile land, and there in the hollow far off to 
the left, he saw a flock of frightened sheep being 
driven pell mell by four dogs across a long, 
narrow field that dipped, then rose again, half 
way up another hill, where it was barred off 
by a stone wall. 

He noted in quick apprehension that one of 
the “shaggy coated dogs” was in the lead, which 
one he was too far away to tell. Anxiously he 
plunged headlong down the hill, and as he drew 
nearer, the dogs had gotten the sheep in the 
farthermost corner of the field against the stone 
wall, where they stood huddled together in 
piteous fright, not knowing which way to run. 

James leaped the fence, calling loudly and 
sternly to Toby, Roy, and Blarney as he ran 
across the field. At the sound of his voice, the 
three dogs in the rear turned, and as they came 
toward him, with almost a sob of thankfulness, 
he recognised dear old Rob-roy McGregor’s 
long, pointed white nose. 


Toby 


135 


Sport, however, maddened by his long confine¬ 
ment, rushed on heedless of everything. He was 
wild. He was crazed. He heard and felt noth¬ 
ing but the hot blood within him that surged in 
a mad torrent to his brain. As a rule sheep- 
killers are cowards working stealthily in the 
night. But Sport was blind now to the danger of 
detection. He cared for nothing — feared noth¬ 
ing except that his thirst for blood that had been 
parching his throat for so long, might not even 
now be slaked. 

He was in the midst of the flock now, and with 
a savage growl he sprang on a sheep and pulled 
him down. Just as he did so, James rushed up, 
and Sport, in a frenzy of baffled rage, turned on 
him, growling furiously, as James clubbed him off. 

James got there just in time to save the 
sheep’s life. There could be no question now, 
however, about which dog was the sheep-killer. 
The mistress of the house had been right. 

That night Sport was shot by the farmer and 
buried up in the woods. 

And now that poor Sport had paid the full 
penalty, again all went happily and serenely 


136 


Toby 


with our dogs. We had perfect dogs once more, 
who resumed their hunts in the woods, re¬ 
turning to us betimes with sundry scratches 
and wounds, to be sure, and often disreputably 
dirty, but always gay, loving, and sociable, and 
affably ready to abandon any sport to follow us 
on our walks and drives. 

Nor, strange as it may seem, were they ever 
known from that time on to glance even side- 
wise at a flock of sheep. Here indeed was a 
study on the question of influence and associa¬ 
tion. As with dogs, so with people. As with 
people, so with dogs. One wonders if the 
analogy does not hold good ! 


“From the earliest periods of time, as far as 
records go, the dog has existed as the friend and 
assistant of man. . . . Nor need we wonder that 
the ancients placed it in the starry heavens, or made 
it the deified symbol of abstract ideas. ‘ The 
Egyptians,' says M. Elzear Blaze, ‘ seeing in the ho¬ 
rizon a superb star which always appeared at the 
time when the overflow of the Nile began, gave it the 
name of Sirius ( Latrator) because it seemed to show 
itself expressly in order to warn the labourer against 
the inundation. The Sirius, — it is a dog, they 
said, — it is a god! Its appearance corresponding 
with the periodical rising of the Nile, the dog was 
soon considered the genius of that river; they rep¬ 
resented this genius with the body of a man and 
the head of a dog. It had a genealogy, — it took the 
name of Anubis, son of Osiris; its image was 
placed at the entrance of the temple of Isis and Osiris 
and afterwards on the gate of all the temples of 
Egypt. The dog being the symbol of vigilance, they 
thus intended to warn princes of their constant duty 
to watch over the good of their people.' 

“Plutarch says, ‘The circle which touches and 
separates the two hemispheres and which on account 
of this division has received the name of horizon, is 
called Anubis. It is represented under the form of 
a dog, because this animal watches during the day 
and during the night.'” 

— History of the Dog, by W. C. L. Martin. 


Another explanation of why the Egyptians gave 
Anubis the head of a dog is that he loved the chase 
and dogs, and in war, where he constantly followed 
Osiris, he had the face of a dog upon his shield and 
upon his standard. 

Anubis is also said to have been one of the 
counsellors of Isis and was given a dog's head to 
symbolise his sagacity. His statue was of gold or 
gilded, and earthly dogs of a black and white colour 
were alternately sacrificed to it. 

Another Egyptian deity Thoth or Sothis, the 
Mercury of that nation, is represented with the head 
of a dog. 

“ The Bagobos of the Philippine Islands believe 
that the earth rests upon a great post, which a large 
serpent is trying to remove. When the serpent 
shakes the post, the earth quakes. At such times the 
Bagobos beat their dogs to make them howl, for the 
howling of the animals frightens the serpent, and he 
stops shaking the post. Hence so long as an earth¬ 
quake lasts the howls of dogs may be heard to pro¬ 
ceed from every house in a Bagobo village 

— Frazer’s The Golden Bough. 


CHAPTER IX 


“Whole towns worship the dog, but no one worships 
Diana.” — Juvenal. 

one looks back upon the days of 
Toby’s youth, surely it was an 
idyllic existence we passed there 
on the hill — with Toby to keep 
us from getting dull. 

South, east, and west of us one could look off 
over an open country of fields and meadows, to 
the distant hills that melted a darker blue into 
the blue of the sky. From early spring until 
late autumn the eye was ravished by the chang¬ 
ing colours displayed by nature as she responded 
in her own glorious ways to man’s demands upon 
her; not only giving him sustenance as a reward 
for his labours, but giving to everything she 
does for him a beauty that is indescribable. 

She gave to us on the hill in early spring the 
soft brown of the upturned earth, mingled with 
the warm, bright green of the wheat fields. 



139 


140 


Toby 


Then as the season advanced, there was the 
pale blue green of the oats and the duller green 
of barley. She gave to us for our delight the 
blossoming fruit trees, the waving corn, the 
yellow of harvest time, and the gorgeous tints 
of autumn. All through the year she revealed 
to us in some new phase her marvellous and 
wonder-working charms, and all unconsciously 
we marvelled and worshipped, as man has 
wondered and worshipped since the first be¬ 
ginning of things. 

All about us we felt the spirit of beauty, 
growth, fruition, and then rest — like the slow 
unhasting growth of some souls. For here, to 
us on the hill, nature manifested herself in 
her most peaceful and lovely mood. It is not 
strange that poets have risen to their greatest 
heights of passionate fervour in describing the 
wonderful processes of nature, nor that each 
poet soul, each seer that has been born into 
the world, thinks with dreamy delight of the 
fascination that lies in tilling the soil, putting 
the seed in the ground, watching it grow from 
day to day until finally it ripens, is harvested, 


Toby 


141 


and stored safely away. To him the symbol 
of man’s pilgrimage on earth is found there. 

We had had this lovely vista all our lives, yet 
each year the glory of it burst forth anew. And 
with the changing fields spread out before us on 
three sides, there was always as a background, 
the never changing yet ever changing woods, 
that called out to us in summer to come and 
partake of their cool, green shade, and spring, 
summer, and autumn whispered a thousand 
messages to Toby. 

Only in winter do the woods and all wood 
creatures fall asleep. And in winter Toby, too, 
relaxed until the first warm days came once 
more, telling him the joyful news that nature 
had waked up, that the woods again were alive 
with humming sounds, and calling to him to be 
off. 

This is a story of a little dog, a little white 
fox terrier, who lived to see his family pass 
through many phases, through many vicissitudes 
and changes. The greatest change in Toby’s 
and their existence came, however, when one 
day out of the nowhere there stalked in amongst 


142 Toby 

them the spirit of “doing things,” the spirit of 
“making good.” 

Even in our remoteness it found us out, this 
spirit that has taken possession of women, 
driving them out of lives of unambitious ease 
to do battle with big and vital things. The 
dreamy, tranquil existence of former days sud¬ 
denly seemed shameful, when at our very door 
was a big work crying to be done. And to 
the consternation of the distant male member, 
we announced that we were going to dismiss 
the farmer and take up practical farming our¬ 
selves. 

Truth to tell, everything about the idea capti¬ 
vated the imagination. And no one can deny 
that farming, once you divorce yourself from 
the blind obstinacy of the average farmer, who 
persists in old-time methods, doing his work 
sullenly and mechanically in a dull, lifeless, 
stupid way, is vividly interesting. 

Since the death of the head of the house, the 
farm had been worked on shares — a peace 
without profit way. And as time went on we 
found ourselves spiritually weary from too much 


Toby 


143 


peace, and materially languishing from the 
yearly increasing lack of profit. 

It would seem indeed as if the majority of 
farmers shrewdly and cunningly weighed up 
your capacity for gullibility, and acted accord¬ 
ingly. 

But in this respect it must be owned they do 
not differ from the 

“ Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief. 

Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief.” 

Predatory instincts are not confined to the 
highwayman of old, nor to the rich man of 
to-day. There have always been robber barons 
and always lesser thieves. It would appear, 
alas, if you think about it, that when it comes 
to taking advantage of those who are weaker or 
more helpless than ourselves, we are indeed 
brothers of one race. And when need comes, on 
the other hand, for help, all help like brothers. 
So there you are. We are all good, and we are 
all bad. Each in his own time and in his own 
way. 

The last farmer, however, in forming his 
estimate of us, did not seem to understand that 


144 


Toby 


our intelligence was languishing into lethargy 
solely from disuse. He took it for granted in his 
stolid, Teutonic way that we had none. He was 
so confident, indeed, that we had none that he 
forced us to make a change, if only to prove to 
him — and to ourselves as well — that we were 
not so dull as he thought us. 

Without the least intending it, we may be 
sure, it was he that added fuel to the flame. 
Although the last creature in the world to have 
desired it or to have understood it, it was that 
last farmer who made us adopt a career, and 
become modern progressive women. It was his 
inadequacies, and his failure to appreciate us, 
in conjunction with that new invading spirit 
of woman’s belief in her own power to cope with 
things, that inspired us to run the farm our¬ 
selves. And yet in the last analysis, it was 
Toby that drove us into it. It was his spirit 
of indefatigable enterprise that filled the air. 
So in spite of masculine protests, the farmer 
was allowed to go when his year was up, James, 
now grown to manhood, was installed as 
manager, farm tools and live stock were bought, 























There was much for Toby to do, These Days of Farming. 








Toby 


145 


and the business of practical farming was 
entered upon by Toby and Toby’s family with 
zest. 

Indeed Toby found so much doing now that 
unless a little dog wanted to miss things there 
was hardly any time left to go to the woods. 
There was manure to draw with James and the 
horses ; fields to plough and drag; the grain to be 
drilled in and then rolled; and later the corn to 
be planted. A thousand things there were on 
these two hundred and fifty acres that suddenly 
demanded his intimate attention. 

The reason Toby liked it so much is because 
farming requires enthusiasm unhampered by re¬ 
flection. It is this, too, although we were not so 
conscious of it then, that makes it a profession 
ideally suited to women. 

In past years Toby’s mistress had been content 
to look off appreciatively upon the ripening 
fields. Now, however, as harvest time ap¬ 
proached she must enter and spend hours in 
them, intoxicated with their beauty near at 
hand. And Toby, struck with admiration of his 
mistress in her new role of an outdoor woman, 


146 


Toby 


was fain to neglect James and the woods to 
follow her in her prowls. 

All the rest of the summer these two were 
constantly together leading a truly pastoral 
existence. Toby for long hours at a time would 
loll with his mistress against a cock of hay just 
as if he were a dreamer, too, instead of a busy, 
enterprising little fox terrier with plenty of his 
own kind of work to do. 

And where Toby was, Blarney and Rob-roy 
McGregor would come leaping and bounding, 
too, telling Toby’s mistress in their expressive 
dog way how exuberantly happy they were to 
welcome her to their out of doors, and that they, 
too, were completely enamoured with this poetic 
and picturesque side of farming. 

Most affably and obligingly the three dogs 
would sit for their pictures wherever she thought 
best to pose them. Dogs, with their irresistibly 
charming vanity, that knows not the looking 
glass and has no fear of results, and with their 
equally unquenchable desire to please, seem to 
know in some occult way what a camera means, 
and that, being dogs and loving you, they must 








































A Truly Pastoral Existence 








Toby 147 

justify your faith and expectations and look 
their very best. 

Being dogs, too, they were perfectly willing 
to be dilettantes with one they loved, just as they 
would have been practical with her had she been 
a practical farmer. Why they should have 
deserted James for a vagrant, idle wanderer 
about the fields is hard to say. But perhaps they 
didn’t desert him. Perhaps they were with 
him so much that he hardly missed them. In 
truth, a dog has a woman’s capacity for infinite 
devotion to many, or like a woman, too, if 
occasion offers, he will be the adoring, worship¬ 
ping slave of one only. 

It was a great, glorious, experimental summer ! 
And the second summer of farming should have 
been like it, only sublimated, the pastoral life 
growing into an ever widening circle of joy. 
Yet tacitly, without comment or protest from 
anyone, Toby’s mistress gradually withdrew 
from active participation in farming. She gave 
up wandering over the fields with camera in hand 
and three dogs at her heels. It would be repeat¬ 
ing herself and to repeat is to react. 


148 


Toby 


She was perfectly sure that farming under¬ 
taken in the right spirit, with the proper amount 
of intelligence brought to bear, could be lifted 
from the plane of patient, unthinking toil to 
that toward which all striving souls aspire — the 
existence that is unconsciously every man’s 
dream, to be one and at harmony with nature, 
working with her and through her to an ever 
deepening understanding of her mighty plans, 
and of the high purposes of life. 

She believed herself, also, to be an amiable 
philosopher of the Christian school, who prided 
herself upon her ability to accept things as they 
come, and thus to confound Fate itself, outwit 
it, if you please, by the easy, gracious way she 
met it. Yet the mere fact of the way in which 
it rained or did not rain was her philosophical 
undoing. Could the old bit of sophistical reason¬ 
ing have come true, “It rains or it does not rain; 
it does not rain, therefore it rains,” her repu¬ 
tation as a farmer of esprit might have been 
saved. 

Indeed many illusions in regard to herself 
faded into nothingness during this experience of 


Toby 


149 


getting closer and closer to nature. Had she an¬ 
alysed her feelings before this experiment began, 
she would have said that she had a firm and 
unshakable belief in the rulings of Providence — 
which includes the weather. “ The Lord sends the 
rain alike upon the just and the unjust farmer. 
Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Unless one 
can say that from the depths of a sincere heart, 
he is not yet fit to be a farmer. “The days of 
affliction have indeed taken hold upon him and 
trouble and anguish shall make him afraid.” 

Heretofore a beautiful day had been to Toby’s 
mistress a day to enjoy, and a day of rain of 
value as well in its own way. But now after 
the first season of farming she found herself in 
constant friction with nature on that very 
vital question of rain. She who was to lead 
farmers upward to a higher appreciation of 
aesthetic joy, untrammelled by fear of results, 
working with nature instead of against her, 
following the Universal Law, she it was who fell 
first, with a bruising, humiliating thud from her 
high estate. As a matter of fact, she was no 
whit better than the average farmer, who, from 


150 


Toby 


the time he gets up in the morning until he 
retires with the chickens at night moans con¬ 
tinuously about the weather. If it is a glorious 
day and his crops need rain, still is his soul 
vexed within him. And insensibly, before she 
realised what was happening, Toby’s mistress 
had fallen into that farmer way of looking 
apprehensively at the sky, and a cloud as big as 
a man’s hand at harvest time was a source of 
anxiety that no power of reasoning could subdue. 

Thus the mere fact of ‘it rains or it does not 
rain ’ took all joy out of intimate association with 
anything that when you came to depend upon 
her, was so heartlessly unresponsive as nature. 
Again too responsive, she was always in excess, 
lavish, a miser, — one year an ingrate yielding 
no return for a season’s toil, another year a 
benevolent goddess who smiles upon all your 
undertakings. 

And so having loved nature blindly before, 
Toby’s mistress, now that she was becoming prac¬ 
tically acquainted with her — living on the same 
farm with her, so to speak — had a daily accu¬ 
mulating grouch against her. Never indeed had 


Toby 


151 


she felt such an active distrust of Providence as 
upon these sobering days of farming. 

To work with nature and yet be unable to 
control her is a soul-warping thing. It was 
Goethe’s opinion that no person of imagination 
could work with the soil. From her own ex¬ 
perience Toby’s mistress came to the conclusion 
that to farm successfully and happily you 
must be phlegmatic, the more so the better; 
of equal mind as to good and evil result; and 
“unsolicitous about the event of things;” or 
else you must be filled with the gambling spirit 
that loves nothing better than taking big chances. 
And she would take a chance with anything , 
she assured herself, sooner than with nature, 
unless she had her right under her thumb. 

In truth, there is never but one summer of 
aesthetic farming. After that it becomes in¬ 
tensely real. No more can one play with it and 
take it lightly. It gathers everything and 
everyone into itself. One does not farm; one 
becomes a farmer, and there is a vast difference 
between the two. You find yourself drawn into 
a great and mighty conflict with nature. She 


152 


Toby 


cheats you, disappoints you, disheartens you, and 
again so graciously and bounteously responds 
to you that ever she lures you on. She drains 
you of vitality and buoyancy, so that you have 
only dogged, stolid persistence left. But if 
she has cast her spell upon you, you are done 
for for all time. 

As her own enthusiasm faded, Toby’s mistress 
saw that the enthusiasm of the other members 
of the family had only waxed the greater. They 
had become indeed the most visionary of vision¬ 
aries, practical farmers. They saw everything 
large. They were full of big plans. They were 
working entirely for the future, and were ready 
confidently to take issue with nature at every 
turn. They were cheerfully and hopefully res¬ 
olute in their belief and determination, moreover, 
that eventually she must yield up to them with¬ 
out stint her richest treasures. 

The dream of the soil had taken possession of 
the others — the weight of it oppressed the soul 
of the dreamer. 

In the presence of their magnificent belief 
she felt like a pitiful, cowardly renegade. She 


Toby 


153 


who had once prided herself upon being able to 
fit into any condition of life! 

She was told with superb scorn that everyone 
farms these days. 

She could not deny it. 

And that she who had always hankered to be 
in the movement — but discreetly — was now 
hopelessly behind the times. 

She knew it, and mourned in knowing it. 

“Certainly you are a misfit as a farmer.” 

That said it all. 

Thus contemptuously was the family steam 
roller applied to Toby’s mistress. 

Truth to tell, with visionaries a dreamer has 
no place, and gradually Toby’s mistress found 
herself outside the family conclaves and living 
more and more in a world of her own. And 
sometimes, when the tears would roll down her 
cheeks as one by one her dreams vanished, a 
little fox terrier dog would cry, too, in sym¬ 
pathy, and leap up to lick her face. 




“ L'Eloge de la vie familiale, de la vie active, de la 
vie agricole tient une bonne part du troisieme chap- 
itre du Vendidad. ‘A qui des deux bras travaille 
la terre, celle-ci apporte la richesse comme un ami, 
un ami cheri, elle lui apporte la posterity et la richesse 
tandis qu'il est etendu couche. Celui qui des deux 
bras cultive cette te e 6 saint Zarathustra! cette terre 
lui dit: Homme qui me cultives des deux bras je 
veux toujours porter toutes les nourritures avec le 
fruit des champs. Celui qui ne cultive pas cette 
terre des deux bras, 6 sa 'nt Zarathustra! cette terre 
lui dit: Homme qui ne me cultives pas des deux 
bras, tu vas toujour v mendier ta nourriture a la 
porte d'autres . . . o createur . . . quel est Vac- 
croisement de la loi mazdeenne? A cela Ahura 
Mazda repondit: C'estlorsqu'on cultive les cerSales 
avec assiduite, 6 saint Zarathustra! Qui cultive les 
fruits des champs, celui-la cultive la purete, il 
favorise la loi mazdeenne il developpe la loi maz- 
dSenne . . . Lorsquil y a des fruits de la terre 
les demons sifflent; lorsqu'il y a des pousses les 
demons toussent; lorsqu'il y a des tiges les demons 
pleurent; lorsqu'il y a d'epais Spis les demons 
prennent la fuite. C'est dans la demeure ou se 
trouvent le plus d'epis que les demons sont le plus 
lerr asses'" 

— Morale de I'Avesta. Trans, by Avel Hovelacque. 

“On dit d'un flatteur: ‘Il fait le chien couchant 

— French proverb. 


“ Amongst the many animals whose forms the 
corn-spirit is supposed to take are the wolf, dog, hare, 
fox, cocfc, goose, quail, cat, goat, cow (ox, bull), 
pig, and horse. In one or other of these shapes the 
corn-spirit is often believed to be present in the corn, 
and to be caught or killed in the last sheaf. As the 
corn is being cut the animal flees before the reapers, 
and if a reaper is taken ill on the field, he is sup¬ 
posed to have stumbled unwittingly on the corn- 
spirit, who has thus punished the profane intruder. 

. . . The corn-spirit conceived as a wolf or a dog 
... is common in France, Germany and Slavonic 
countries. Thus, when the wind sets the corn in 
wave-like motion the peasants often say ‘ The wolf is 
going over, or through, the corn' ‘the Rye-wolf is 
rushing over the field,' the 'Wolf is in the corn,' ‘the 
mad Dog is in the corn,' ‘the big Dog is there.'. . . 
Both dog and wolf appear as embodiments of the 
corn-spirit in harvest-customs. . . . But it is in 
the harvest-customs of the north-east of France 
that the idea of the Corn-dog comes out most clearly. 
Thus when a harvester, through sickness, weariness, 
or laziness, cannot or will not keep up with the reaper 
in front of him, they say, ‘ The White Dog passed 
near him,' ‘he has the White Bitch,' or *the White 
Bitch has bitten him.' In the Vosges the Harvest- 
May is called the ‘Dog of the Harvest' and the person 
who cuts the last handful of hay or wheat is said to 
‘ kill the Dog.' " —Frazer’s The Golden Bough. 




Hers was the Garden Type of Mind. 










CHAPTER X 


“The great business of life is to be, to do, to do without, 
to depart.” —John Morley. 

“There is no dog so sad but he will wag his 
tail.” — Proverb. 

T the opening of the third season of 
farming, Toby’s mistress, without 
entering into any elaborate ex¬ 
planations, asked to have enough for 
a garden patch set off for her. To herself, how¬ 
ever, she admitted ruefully that she only 
measured up to one small half-acre of ground. 
Hers was the garden type of mind, she told 
herself. A half-acre of ground represented the 
summit of her aspiration. 

With a garden hose for sprinkling in times of 
drouth, and sufficient energy to weed in times of 
rain, she argued hopefully, one can defy nature, 
control the jade, in short, and keep one’s serenity 
at the same time. To the masterful and un¬ 
daunted, she resigned her share of the remaining 
157 



158 


Toby 


two hundred and forty-nine and one-half acres. 
“You may have all the profits, too,” she added 
as an afterthought. 

And each morning now during the spring and 
summer Toby and his mistress worked in the 
garden, and each afternoon Toby spent in the 
woods. 

The refrain of an old French translation of 
the Zenda-Vesta sang in the ears of Toby’s 
mistress as she worked in her garden. 

“ Celui qui ne cultive pas cette ter re des deux bras , 6 
saint Zarathustra! cette terre lui dit: Homme qui ne me 
cultives pas des deux bras y tu vas toujours mendier ta 
nourriture a la porte d’autres” 

While she cultivated the ground she reflected 
cheerfully. If you garden strenuously enough, 
you may keep in the movement that is bent 
steadily nature-ward, without being the move¬ 
ment itself; also — and this is not to be sneezed 
at — you may contribute your share to the 
conversation of nature-loving, farming-loving 
friends, instead of their reducing you to helpless, 
ignorant, protesting silence; you may indeed be¬ 
come a bore to others, instead of being bored 


Toby 


159 


yourself, — a positive joy should ever be pre¬ 
ferred to negative, enduring suffering, — and by 
gardening, too, “des deux bras” you may cir¬ 
cumvent the wrath of the gods ! 

No wonder Toby’s mistress was happy ! 
Even weeding a garden is fascinating sport, if 
you have a little fox terrier to keep you company. 
And when you add to that a saucy chipmunk 
who spends the summer, too, right in the vicinity 
of your garden, it is easy enough to see how it 
is possible for gardening never to grow dull. 

All that summer the chipmunk played with 
Toby until Toby nearly died of spleen and 
mortification. Sometimes his mistress would 
look up from her work in the direction whence 
came his bark of agony, and there in the orchard 
that ran parallel with her garden, she would see 
Toby, balancing himself on the very end of a 
low spreading bough of an apple tree, looking 
up in a very frenzy of longing to the topmost 
branch, where sat his mocking little foe. The 
chipmunk loved most of all, however, to perch on 
the highest limb of a tall, old-fashioned pear tree 
that stood in the middle of the garden. From 


160 


Toby 


here he would look down at Toby, and according 
to Toby’s understanding of the matter, the 
chipmunk didn’t do a thing but gibe at him, 
and make faces at him, and tell him what a 
failure he was as a tree climber. Indeed, the 
chipmunk never gave him a moment’s peace. 
Even in the late afternoon when he had come 
home from the woods, tired, hot, and dirty, 
craving only food, a bath, and rest, the chip¬ 
munk would call. Toby would prick up his 
ears at the sound, run to the door to be let 
out, and then rush frantically to the garden. 

It was agonising but interesting, and a fox 
terrier can stand any amount of agony, if the 
interest keeps up. To the best of our belief, 
Toby never made even an approach toward 
getting the chipmunk. Therefore, we may con¬ 
ceive, that a chipmunk represented to Toby 
the alluring chase of the unattainable. 

It seemed, as summer followed summer, that 
outside the garden everyone was serious and 
practical now. Everyone was growing up, 
Toby’s mistress used to whisper to Toby. 
Were they growing old, too ? Many a confab 



A Chipmunk the Alluring Chase of the Unattainable. 






Toby 


161 


did they have together over the strange changes 
that this violently progressive spirit had brought 
about in their lives. No more fun, was there, 
Toby. No gay harum-scarum races to the 
woods, with an eager, sport-loving boy to follow 
you and help you out of a scrape. James, alas, 
had grown up, too, and as manager of the farm 
was gravely aware of his responsibilities. 

Now no one talked of dogs and their tricks. 
No one had time to discuss the last book unless 
it was a nature book. In fact, no one had 
time to talk about anything but farming. 
And it is simply amazing, Toby’s mistress told 
her little dog, the quantity of perfectly uninterest¬ 
ing things that can be said about farming. It 
begins with the rotation of crops and carries you 
through the whole animal kingdom, — domestic 
animals, that is, — and she had yet to hear 
anything interesting said about chickens, pigs, 
or cows. A horse used to be a thing of joy and 
beauty, but now that we are farmers, he is sim¬ 
ply a creature with four legs to go lame on, 
and multiply these four legs by nine and there 
you have thirty-six legs to overpower you with 

M 


162 


Toby 


fearsome emotion ! There are so many horse 
diseases to talk about, too, Toby, and queer 
things that afflict chickens and cows. 

Then there are farm tools ! Something is 
always giving out or going wrong with farm 
tools. You do not wonder, if you happen to be 
just a dreamer, that the manufacturers of farm 
tools are rich enough to endow universities and 
contribute a portion of their surplus to the 
running of political campaigns. These tools, 
although made of such enduring things as wood, 
and iron, and steel, stand practical use about as 
long as dew stands the rays of the sun. And 
you say to yourself, what cleverness, what subt¬ 
lety, what ingenuity it must require to be able 
to make these hard substances so that they 
last such a little while ! And of all farm im¬ 
plements that have as yet been devised the 
most cunningly contrived one of the whole 
devil’s brood is the drill ! Was there ever an 
infernal machine invented that has the upsetting 
qualities of the drill ? — You see, Toby, one 
can talk an endless time about things that 
pertain to farming. 


Toby 


163 


And Toby confided back that he, too, found 
the whole subject boring. Cheerfully and loy¬ 
ally he would have followed his beloved James 
to the very jaws of death, but to follow him day 
after day over ploughed fields, whatever the 
poets may say, is a stupid, monotonous existence. 
Toby acknowledged, too, that his only interest in 
chickens and pigs lay in chasing them; also there 
was a lot of fun and a glorious amount of danger 
in biting the hind legs of a cow. Beyond that 
he, too, found them very uninteresting creatures. 

After one of these sympathetic interchanges, 
it was surprising how near each felt to the 
other. And as time wore on, they became more 
and more dependent upon each other for amuse¬ 
ment, comfort, and solace. Farmers may grow 
old and solemn, they told each other, but those 
that hunt and those that dream are ever young 
in spirit. 

It was an almost daily occurrence now for 
them to start off together for a walk up the woods 
road, with Roy and Blarney running on ahead. 
The little white dog would dash on gleefully 
with his friends, but every few moments he must 


164 


Toby 


dart back again to his mistress just to look into 
her face and assure himself that she was happy, 
too. He would trot by her side long enough 
to tell her how glorious it was to have her com¬ 
pany, then, as a bird pours forth its melody, 
Toby from the same excess of joy, would bound 
off again in flying leaps to overtake Blarney and 
Roy. 

And as Toby’s mistress watched her little 
fox terrier racing along ahead of her, clearing 
each hindering obstacle by a series of daring 
leaps, it seemed to her that he almost literally 
flew through the air. She would see that little 
white body bound up above the tall weeds and 
bushes that grow thick along the side of a country 
road, float in the air for a yard or two, drop, 
then make another leap, bound up again, skim¬ 
ming lightly over their tops — and so, down and 
up, down and up,.on and on it goes, until she 
would find herself laughing aloud in sheer 
delight, at this vision of joyous, superabundant 
life. 

Up there on the woods road where it makes a 
bend, there was a little mossy green spot high 


Toby 


165 


up on the opposite bank, that was screened from 
the road by a tangle of elder bushes, sumac, and 
undergrowth. And here a rough seat had 
been fashioned under the shade of a tree, where 
Toby’s mistress would spend whole afternoons 
with a book or some work, but more often she 
would sit idly there, absently petting her little 
dog who would cuddle close to her side. 

In ineffable contentment he would lie there 
dreaming, too, until suddenly, with ears alert, 
he would harken for a moment to some strange 
wood sound, and then off he would bound into 
the depths of the forest as if answering to some 
high, imperious call. 

And his mistress would continue to brood and 
dream and ponder undisturbed, upon the strange, 
inscrutable mysteries of human endeavour. 

Soon Toby would return, if the alarm was a 
false one, and listen blinkingly to his mistress, 
whenever she felt inclined to share her reflec¬ 
tions with him. 

“Farms exist, Toby dear,” she told him one 
day, “for three reasons : the first and inexorable 
reason is to provide food for the sustenance of 


166 


Toby 


life; the second is to enable writers of imagina¬ 
tion to concoct bliss-inspiring stuff about the 
beauty, joy, and profits of farming life; and the 
third and last reason, Toby, is to provide phrases 
for godly people. The first reason is logical, 
necessary, and all right. We farmers have a 
homely, unescapable value, but personally I 
object to being exploited for the material and 
spiritual enrichment of the last two. And as 
for the godly people — if they had not us 
farmers to draw upon for phrases, there isn’t a 
religious speaker in the world that could last 
ten minutes. 

“ He will tell you that he sows the seed of right¬ 
eousness in your soul, and like the farmer awaits 
the time of harvest. He promises not to forget 
nor to neglect the seed he has sown. He will 
water it for you in times of spiritual drouth, 
and cultivate it when weeds spring up that 
threaten to strangle its slender existence. He 
goes on to assure you, however, that everything 
depends upon the darkness, the fertile earth, 
the sun, wind, and rain of the spirit. These 
will be supplied from your experience, he tells 


Toby 


167 


you, not from mine. And then having vouch¬ 
safed you that much responsibility toward your 
own soul, he lifts his hand in benediction and 
departs, — telling you as a parting message that 
he is going about on God’s business, but that He 
has not forgotten, He will not forget. 

“ And the capital He means himself and not 
the God whom he represents. 

“ Deprived of that simile of 4 sowing the seed 
like the farmer,’ even he, Toby dear, would 
begin to believe that he no longer had a reason 
for existence. 

“ They will talk, too, about pruning you, all 
for your soul’s salvation, pruning the dead 
limbs of your character. Just as if they were 
not human beings, too, even as I — I nearly said 
‘even as you and I,’ Toby. Assuming that I 
am a tree, are not they, then, of the tree family, 
too ? — And who ever heard of one tree pruning 
another ? A dead tree, to be sure, may fall, 
crushing a live one, but a live tree, if we think 
about it, is too busy just living and growing to 
bother its head about dead ones. Just living 
is occupation enough for most people. And for 


168 


Toby 


those who would prune, let them prune trees, 
or if their taste leads them toward sowing the 
seed let them become farmers — or gardeners 
like myself,” Toby’s mistress added piously. 

“ But let them never aspire to the role of spirit¬ 
ual leaders. For these do not sow the seed, they 
draw forth from some just awakening conscious¬ 
ness what is already there. And this they do 
from having lived themselves and sounded the 
depths of human experience. By their living¬ 
ness — because they live in a larger and fuller 
sense than others the true life of love and self¬ 
lessness — they help others to live. 

“Helping others is usually an unconscious act 
— more so than most of us dream. A boy hears 
a sermon. The minister from the depths of his 
own belief says, ‘The ship that never goes out 
to sea will never founder, but it might better 
founder than lie rotting in the dock.’ This 
expression of his own conviction, his own earnest 
conviction, mind you, crystallises into form 
something that has been stirring in the boy’s 
soul, and he goes forth and achieves success, 
always in after life paying tribute to the message 


Toby 


169 


that sent him out. But the impulse toward 
growth and achievement was already there in his 
own heart. 

“ Edward Carpenter must have known by 
experience that ‘To take by leaving, to hold 
by letting go/ is the life of the soul, else those 
words could not have winged themselves into 
the soul of another, becoming a pivotal message 
in every crisis of that other’s life. 

“No,” Toby’s mistress concluded, “to those who 
still think themselves a race apart whose mission 
it is to sow the seed of righteousness in the dark 
depths of lesser mortals, wicked, sinful souls, 
I offer to them my farm and wages two dollars a 
day, — but not my soul. Their mission is to 
the earth. Their vocation lies not in preaching 
to empty seats, but in helping us farmers to 
solve the problem of farm labour. By good, 
honest, hard work undertaken in all humility, 
they will in time find their level and that the 
road to salvation lies pretty much the same 
way for each and every one of us. 

“ A little fox terrier helps, too, to find the road, 
if you get him as a pup and educate him and 


170 


Toby 


yourself at the same time. If you do this with 
love in your heart, you will be a god to your 
dog, no doubt, but you will ask only to be a 
brother to your fellow beings.” 

Toby sat bolt upright that day listening in 
great excitement to his mistress’s homily. He 
knew the Methodist gentleman to whom she 
referred. And he wanted to tell her, O how he 
wanted to tell her that she made a great mistake 
when she evolved the torpedo idea. If only 
human beings would trust more to the instinct 
of their dogs ! One day the torpedoes had been 
mislaid when the parson went by — that was 
what Toby was longing to tell. 

Toby’s mistress hugs him, “You stupid little 
Toby dog ! I knew where the torpedoes were 
that day, but I didn’t throw them. Goddesses 
do things like that sometimes, when uninstructed 
parsons happen to be about. And he said, 
didn’t he, Toby, when you all pitched on to him 
and he fell off his wheel trying to kick at you — I 
know quite well what he said, that only a family 
of unregenerate heathen would keep so many 
dogs. That’s what they always say, Toby dear. 


Toby 


171 


The unco’ guid, the man who is ‘better than 
thou’ still has the Semitic idea about the dog. 
And then he said, didn’t he, that it was wicked 
to waste so much affection on dogs when there 
were poor children in the world starving — and 
then he picked himself up and rode off just as if 
he had said something holy and fine. 

“What a lot more he would know of life, if he 
had had a little dog like you to educate him. 
Although when I think of how I wanted to make 
a little house dog of you, Toby, I ought not to 
flout the parson.” 

And Toby looked up with his shrewd little 
eyes. “You couldn’t have done it,” they said. 

“The truth is, Toby,” his mistress went on 
musingly, “it is knowing what you are and then 
being it — and it is you who have taught me that. 
Think how unhappy I would have been, if I had 
persisted in trying to be big and progressive and 
embrace the whole earth — that is two hundred 
and fifty acres of it — when I was only fit for a 
garden patch. To be what you are and work at 
the thing you like to do, that’s our nostrum for 
happiness. With you — it’s killing woodchucks 


172 


Toby 


— a queer taste to some — but you like it. And 
with me it’s to potter every morning in my 
garden.” 

Toby was such a polite little listener that 
one could not question his breeding, much less 
his affection. 

There was no doubt that he loved his mistress 
deeply — but still with a certain tolerance. 
She was necessary to his comfort, and she petted 
and made much of him in his hours of ease. 
But those hours of hunting, those breathless 
hours of exciting encounters in the sombre 
woods of mystery and enchantment — those 
were the hours in which he truly lived. And in 
that life which was his very life and existence 
she never shared. 

He knew she wasn’t a true sport — not even 
a make believe one, so when he went into the 
woods he left all thought of her behind. One day 
he had been working for hours at the foot of a 
tall half-dead sycamore tree. He had dug up 
more earth with his paws than a man with pick¬ 
axe and shovel could have dug in the same time. 
He had torn savagely at the roots of the tree 


Toby 


173 


with his teeth, but all in vain. And as he had 
worked, he had longed, O how he had longed for 
Janies ! There was still that perfect respon¬ 
siveness between him and James as of two souls 
that were as one. He had barked until he was 
hoarse hoping James would hear him and leave 
his farming as he used to leave everything to 
come to a little dog who needed his assistance 
mightily. He ran around the tree frantically 
looking for another entrance perchance, then 
leaped back, fearing the woodchuck might escape 
him. To keep doing the thing that does nothing 
to further your ends is so trying to a little fox 
terrier. And to do nothing is so much more try¬ 
ing still ! So Toby dug the earth, tugged at the 
hateful, interposing roots, barked incessantly, and 
never lost sight of the woodchuck for an instant. 

And as he dug and tugged and barked with 
all the vigour of a little fox terrier who was 
being balked of his heart’s desire, he saw a blue 
gown approaching. It came nearer. It came 
right up to where he was. And as he leaped up 
on it regardless of dirty paws, he caught the 
amused smile on his mistress’s face as she edged 


174 


Toby 


around the hole. If only his mistress had been 
a man how perfect she would have been ! She 
was a dreamer, an idler, she was all things 
he loved, but not a sport. 

Inspired by his needs, he implored her for once 
to be one ! He showed her just how, if she were 
to poke a long stick into that little bit of a hole 
where the woodchuck was — a hole too small 
for Toby to get into — the woodchuck would be 
driven into a larger hole where he, Toby, she 
might be perfectly sure, would be waiting for 
him. And she did it! She poked the woodchuck 
right into Toby’s waiting jaws — and then she 
turned her back. 

And as they followed the woods road home, just 
as the sun was casting slanting shadows, Toby 
leaped about her in ecstasy, showing in every way 
his love and gratitude. He was hers, heart, soul, 
and body, he assured her. Even James, whom 
he adored, was now secondary. Oh, how she 
had grown ! he told her. When he first knew 
her she had been a weak, domestic, pusillani¬ 
mous creature afraid of her own shadow, but now 
since this afternoon, she had grown to be brave 


Toby 175 

and strong — a woman worthy to be the owner 
of a fox terrier dog. 

And Toby’s mistress, as they walked along, 
could not help recalling her shudders of horror 
on that Sunday walk on the woods road so 
many years before, when Toby as a pup had 
strewn the way with the bodies of slaughtered 
woodchucks. And now for love of this same 
dog and admiration for his pluck and prowess, 
she it was who had aided him to kill. Strange 
indeed are women ! 

It had not escaped the observant eye of Toby’s 
mistress that latterly when she passed James in 
the cornfield hoeing industriously, as she and 
the dogs wended their way to the woods on a 
fine afternoon, he would pause in his work and 
look after her and the trio in a wistful, reminis¬ 
cent sort of a way. 

One day she stopped to say something to him, 
while the dogs swarmed and leaped about him. 

Without paying any attention to her question, 
his pent-up thoughts that had been gathering 
during these several years of practical farming 
broke forth into fluent speech. 


176 


Toby 


“I tell you what,” James said, “a farmer leads 
a dog’s life. I don’t care what way you put it, 
that’s how it is. If it isn’t one thing, it’s 
another — and it’s something all the time.” 

Here was no speech made up of hearsay 
evidence. Here was the living truth of one’s 
own experience uttered with a force and energy 
that carried conviction with it. 

Toby had been trying vainly to jump into 
his arms, and now James caught him up and 
held him, glaring fixedly off at the distant hills 
as if afraid to meet her eye. He was still a boy 
in years, and was longing for a little sympathy. 
He was longing, too, to go off to the woods with 
Toby, longing to be free, to be a care-free boy 
again. 

“You are wrong, James,” Toby’s mistress 
answered cheerfully. “Dogs, / think, have a 
very free life compared to the farmer’s. But 
if you have the taste for it, you know, if you 
like it — if you like farming, you won’t mind the 
work,” she concluded comfortingly. 

It must be avowed here that the other 
members of the family did not really farm, they 


Toby 


177 


simply propelled James, who in turn propelled 
four men who were under him. And it certainly 
speaks volumes for James’s disposition that he 
could live in a family of women for more than 
fifteen years, and just by the force of an expres¬ 
sive back manage to hold his own. 

This speech was the turning point with James. 
James’s back proclaimed inflexibly, with a moody 
sternness that did not fail to impress the en¬ 
thusiastic promoters of the enterprise, who 
would lead him still further on, that he, for one, 
was determined to resist the spell of the soil. 

It soon became apparent indeed, without 
further words, that thenceforth James would 
farm with discretion. 

It was also tacitly understood, as time went on, 
that a taste for baseball was not incompatible 
with farming, if your position was that of an 
overseer. Also that you farmed all the better, 
there being no ball game on, if you took down 
your gun and sallied forth to the woods now and 
then for an afternoon of sport with the dogs. 

Thus did James, too, finally learn to know 
what you are and to be it. 

N 


178 


Toby 


Now again, as of old, Toby would join James 
in the stable, and perch on his back with his 
front paws hanging down over his shoulder and 
his head pressing against James’s head, and 
there they would hold converse together with 
the blissful, rapt joy of two true sports, who, 
long separated, have found each other once 
more. 

Once more, too, we were regaled with the 
intimate history of Toby’s exploits in the woods. 
Our ears, long denied, now listened again with a 
mingling of pride and foreboding, to marvellous 
and blood-curdling stories of adventure, pluck, 
and daring. Toby, with Roy and Blarney and 
James for admiring followers, scoured the woods 
now more relentlessly than ever. He would 
return sometimes plastered with mud, with his 
nose gouged, his ears torn, and mouth cut and 
bleeding, and then James would exultingly tell 
the story of his unearthing another ’coon, or of 
some fierce encounter with a tough and battle- 
some woodchuck. 

One day, however, Toby came back bleeding 
and scratched all over his head and face. He 



The Tireless Energy of the Fox Terrier. 


























































































' 

















































































Toby 


179 


dropped down outside the house and lay there. 
He wouldn’t eat. He wouldn’t move. His 
mistress picked him up and carried him into the 
house and put him on the couch in the living 
room. He lay there all the afternoon shaking 
and shivering, and refused to be soothed by 
anyone. In alarm over his strange condition, 
she took him up in her arms and carried him 
out to James. James looked at him with a look 
of understanding, smiled a little commiseratingly, 
and said, “Rats, Toby !” whereupon Toby, for¬ 
getting himself, jumped out of his mistress’s 
arms, and, quite well again, began to hunt for 
rats. 

He was only mentally ill, that poor little 
Toby dog! His feelings were hurt. It had 
been, his two friends decided, smiling a little, 
one of those rare and humiliating occasions 
when his game had gotten the best of him, and 
he thought surely he was going to die. 

It was only a few days later that James 
told us, swelling with pride, how Toby had 
made good for this defeat. He was driving with 
James, and his sharp little eyes saw the head 


180 


Toby 


of a muskrat peering out of a ditch along the side 
of the road. Regardless of the fact that the 
horses were going at a swinging trot, he leaped 
out of the runabout, plunged into the ditch, and 
there in the water after a terrific battle with 
this gamiest of fighters, he killed the muskrat. 
Thus did he redeem himself! His face was 
chewed and his body a mass of digs, but he did 
not seem to know it. His tail was straight 
up in the air and he had a deeply satisfied 
look — not vainglorious, not proud — just satis¬ 
fied. A look that indicated plainly enough to 
those who knew him that he had left the enemy’s 
lifeless body stretched out upon the field. 

Besides James, the progressives, too, began 
to show an awakening interest in other things, 
and Toby and Toby’s mistress saw with ill- 
concealed joy that the old condition of things 
was gradually returning. 

During the years of rampant farming Toby’s 
mistress had made it her business each morning 
to arrange the magazine table with the Century, 
Harper's, Scribner, Atlantic, Life, and others of 
that stamp conspicuously in the foreground, 


Toby 


181 


subordinating the Agriculturist , the Farmer's 
Guide , and others of that ilk so that only their 
edges peeped out. And each morning, alas ! she 
would find her system overthrown. The farming 
magazines and periodicals flaunted themselves 
on top, burying the others unread. Still she 
persisted, not hopefully — but conscientiously. 
Now, the magazine table began to show a normal 
disarrangement, betraying the sway of more than 
one idea. Clever stories were being read aloud 
again, too, and topics of the day were being 
sought out and commented upon. Bridge whist 
was being played with avidity, and books on 
bridge were found of a morning on the magazine 
table, where surely they did not belong. 

In short the fever of progressiveness had 
run its course, and Toby’s entire family were 
now farming with discretion. 

It would never do, however, for a garden- 
patch reactionary to speak of it gladsomely as a 
return. The progressive spirit, having run his 
course, may apparently be retracing his steps. 
To the casual onlooker there is no doubt about it. 
Having rushed on to unexplored fields, he is now 


182 


Toby 


coming back to the old, the tried, the common¬ 
place. Not so, however, he will tell you, amazed 
at your curiously turned backward vision. He is 
still going forward, and this is a new common¬ 
place that has never been discovered before. 
That you and he are meeting again on the same 
ground, is because you have gone forward, too, 
without knowing it. You have been swept on in 
spite of yourself by the suction of his mighty ad¬ 
vancement. 

And so, although apparently Toby’s family 
had come back to the old order of things, Toby’s 
mistress knew that a progressive never comes 
back. Although it had seemed to her that these 
had been years of waiting — of standing still 
for her, yet now she was being assured in subtle 
and indirect ways that she, too, was a progressive 
spirit without knowing it. And this thought 
so delicately conveyed, of a truth, was infinitely 
sweet and flattering. Perhaps she had grown 
and gone forward, too ! Perhaps the others 
were not doing what they seemed to be doing — 
coming back to Toby and her — anyway here 
we all were on common ground once more. 


Homer tells us that after Troy was destroyed by 
the Grecians, Ulysses returned from the siege in 
mean apparel, having gone through manifold 
dangers and been absent twenty years. He was 
unknown to his queen and to everyone in his palace 
except his dog, who immediately recognised him. 

“Argus, the dog, his ancient master knew; 

He, not unconscious of the voice and tread 
Lifts to the sound his ear, and rears his head! — 
****** 

He knew his lord: — he knew, and strove to meet, 
(In vain he strove ) to crawl and kiss his feet, 
Yet (all he could) his tail, his ears, his eyes, 
Salute his master and confess his joys. 

****** 

The dog, whom fate had granted to behold 
His lord, when twenty tedious years had rolVd 
Takes a last look, and having seen him, dies. 9 * 

— Odyssey, trans. by Pope. 

“ The dog of the Seven Sleepers was named Katmir 
and was admitted to heaven by Mahomet. He 
guarded the Sleepers 309 years neither moving, 
eating, drinking or sleeping.** 

— Sale’s Koran XVIII, Notes. 

“Dark green was that spot *mid the brown mountain- 
heather. 


Where the Pilgrim of Nature lay stretched in 
decay, 

Like the corpse of an outcast abandoned to weather, 
Till the mountain-winds wasted the tenantless 
clay. 

Nor yet quite deserted , though lonely extended. 
For, faithful in death, his mute favourite attended. 
The much-loved remains of her master defended, 
And chased the hill-fox and the raven away. 

“ How long didst thou think that his silence was 
slumber? 

When the wind waved his garment, how oft didst 
thou start? 

How many long days and long nights didst thou 
number 

Ere he faded before thee, the friend of thy heart?” 

— Scott's lines on the dog — a faithful terrier-bitch 
who guarded her master's remains on the 
mountain Hellvellyn for three months. 

Mark Twain's “ advice” to Paine upon approach¬ 
ing the Gate which is supposed to be guarded by St. 
Peter: — 

“ Leave your dog outside. Heaven goes by favor. 
If it went by merit you would stay out and the dog 
would go in.” 


CHAPTER XI 


“The poor dog in life the firmest friend, 

The first to welcome, foremost to defend, 

Whose honest heart is still his master’s own, 

Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone.” 


— Byron. 



T was a sad time for the dogs when 
winter set in. There was cold, and 
wind, and sleet, and snow in the 
► great outdoors they loved so well. 


Now they were glad enough to hug the fire 
and bask in the love of their beloved family. 
But there was the trouble. At just such a time 
they would see the trunks brought down from 
the attic and, trust them ! they knew perfectly 
well what those horrid big boxes meant. After 
these appeared, there would be a few days of 
hurry and confusion, when no one had a word 
to say to dogs. Then a night would come when 
they would be gorged on crackers and cookies, 
and petted and hugged and made much of. But 


185 




186 


Toby 


that didn’t count for much, either, if you have a 
sure prescience of what’s coming. The next 
morning — it never failed — the boxes would 
be taken down to the station, and always there 
was a mysterious connection between their 
going and the family’s. Those boxes meant, 
indeed, that their family was going away. 

Droopingly and mournfully they would gaze 
after the departing train. Life for them was 
existence now — not living — until their family 
came back with the spring. 

They had their beloved James, to be sure, 
and he and Toby were dearer friends than ever. 
But when you are used to a lot of love — used 
to love from all sides and from many, you miss 
it, someway. It would seem, as one thinks 
about it, that this little Toby, for such a con¬ 
centrated little chap, had a very capacious heart. 

It was a question which he himself could not 
have answered, perhaps, in these latter days, 
which one stood first in his heart, his own mis¬ 
tress or James, or perhaps there is no such thing 
as who comes first in a heart that is large with 
love. There is room enough in such a heart for 


187 


Toby 

all, and each one has his own place. He be¬ 
longed to these two, to be sure. He was theirs. 
But that did not prevent his bestowing much 
love upon the other members of the family — 
and an infinite amount upon the mother. It 
was to the latter he would come of an evening, 
entreating the hospitality of her lap. Also, 
early in the morning, sometime between three 
and four, his mistress would hear Toby stir, 
shake himself, and then jump off the couch 
where he slept in her room and trot off to the 
mother’s room. 

His mistress had some inflexible rules that he 
knew could not be infringed upon, but he also 
knew, trust a dog for that, that her family were 
not so wedded as she was to her ideas of what 
constituted a well brought up dog. Not being 
unaware of this herself, Toby’s mistress had a 
suspicion that Toby of a chilly morning used to 
nose himself inside the bed and cuddle up 
with huge sighs of contentment in the loving 
arms of the mother. The mother never ad¬ 
mitted this to be true, neither did she deny it, 
however. There would come a traitorous, 


188 


Toby 


amused glint in her eyes, nevertheless, when 
taxed with it, and she and Toby could be seen 
exchanging glances that showed unmistakably 
that there was a delightful secret between them. 
But neither one betrayed the other. 

There was no use pressing the matter, Toby’s 
mistress found, and when it comes to a bed, a 
dog, even the best trained, will circumvent you, 
if he can. If he can’t do it with you and there 
is another — he will do it with that other. 
Henry C. Merwin, in Dogs and Men , says, 
“Perhaps the final test of anybody’s love of 
dogs is a willingness to permit them to make 
a camping ground of the bed. There is no other 
place that suits the dog quite so well. On the 
bed he is safe from being stepped upon; he is 
out of the way of drafts; he occupies a com¬ 
manding position from which to survey what 
goes on in the world ; and, above all, the surface 
is soft and yielding to his outstretched limbs. 
No mere man can ever be so comfortable as a 
dog looks.” 

And now another autumn had come and 
Toby and Rob-roy McGregor and Blarney 


Toby 


189 


had gone through the mournfulness of another 
parting. They were just living now in antici¬ 
pation. The warm spring days meant the woods 
again, and life, sport, hunting. But most of 
all the awakening of spring meant love, and the 
symbol of it to them was the annual return of 
their much loved family after a long and cruel 
absence. Then how joyous and out of a full 
heart was the greeting of the dogs as they 
welcomed their family home ! 

But this year Toby’s family came back 
early. The ground was still covered with 
snow and ice. They came in sadly, and one — 
the most precious one of all — did not come back. 
And as if awed by something new and strange 
in this, the dogs’ full-throated, boisterous wel¬ 
come died into a pathetic look of dumb inquiry. 

We, who had seen this life of absolute self- 
sacrifice and self-surrender pass on in splendid 
beauty, triumphantly untarnished, were com¬ 
forted by her spirit, that still seemed tenderly 
and broodingly to enfold us in a thin, impalpable 
veil of love. As ever, she who was all love, knew 
even now how to assuage the bitterness of our 


190 


Toby 


grief. But little Toby had not seen “Death 
set his seal,” and he looked for her bodily and 
visible presence day after day. She had gone 
away with us. Why did she not return ? He 
would search for her all over the house and then 
look up into our eyes, mutely questioning. He 
found no answer, and still hoping and longing 
to see her again he would not give up. Each 
night, toward early morning, his mistress would 
hear him stir, shake himself, then trot down the 
hall to the mother’s room, enter, and finding 
it still deserted, he would give a little cry and 
then come sadly back to her. Night after 
night he did this until many weeks rolled by. 
Then he would go only as far as the steps that 
led down to her room. He would go down the 
first step, pause, and seem to bethink himself — 
turn around with a pathetic little cry and come 
slowly back. 

Then finally he gave up looking for her. The 
great insolvable mystery had stolen upon her 
when he could not see its coming — so how could 
a little dog be expected to know it was that ? 
But now at last he knew. He realised — be- 


Toby 


191 


cause love knows love — that only a long, long 
departure across the borders of the world could 
keep her away from him and us so long. And 
so he looked for her no more. 

In truth, life on the hill was changing fast. 
Only a little later, when the woods called aloud 
to Toby that spring had come, he had lost his 
gay and swaggering friend Rob-roy McGregor. 
For eight years, ever since he was a little puppy, 
these two had been the staunchest and most de¬ 
voted comrades. Once only did they have a 
difference, and that was not because Toby, 
having killed the woodchuck, objected to Roy’s 
posing before us with collie bluster and pride 
as the hero — oh, no ! it was not that sort of 
jealousy at all. It was over which one could 
show the most love for us and be the first to 
welcome us home from a drive. Toby was first 
out of the door and would have reached us first, 
too, if Roy in a fit of jealousy had not seized 
him and bit him on the head. Never before 
had we seen Toby “fighting mad.” His life, 
so tempestuous in the woods, was one of peace 
and perfect good nature with other dogs. Now, 


192 


Toby 


however, aroused by this unexpected and un¬ 
called-for attack of a friend, he turned on 
Roy in a fury of indignation, and had to be 
borne off struggling in his mistress’s arms, for 
fear they would chew each other up. 

Toby spent the rest of the day shivering in 
perfectly justifiable anger. He was cut to the 
heart by Roy’s treachery, and he wouldn’t get 
over it either. Every time Roy attempted to 
come near him Toby would growl. And the poor 
hot-headed collie, in an agony of shame and 
sorrow, would abase himself before his little 
friend. He hung around Toby, he cried, he 
licked his head, and in every way that a dog could, 
he humbly begged for forgiveness. And at last 
Toby’s heart melted. They made it up, and the 
next morning early we saw them frisking off to 
the woods together, the best of friends once 
more. 

It had been Rob-roy McGregor, too, who had 
saved Toby’s life after a dreadful night alone 
in the woods. One morning early Toby and 
Roy disappeared and at intervals all that day 
we heard the woods ring with their barks. As 


Toby 


193 


night was falling, Roy came back alone and 
Toby’s shrill, impetuous bark was heard no 
longer. It grew dark, and he did not come, 
and full of concern his faithful James tramped 
through the woods with lantern and dog whistle, 
but to his calls there came no response. Bed¬ 
time came, and there was no little Toby to 
dance and bark and sneeze and beg for a cracker. 
No one of the household could sleep that night, 
thinking of that poor little dog lying dead or 
dying in the woods after a bitter contest with 
some strange wild animal, big and savage enough 
to fight to the death a brave little fox terrier. 

And, as if to make the circumstance more 
grievous and desolating still, it thundered and 
lightened in the middle of the night and the 
rain came down in sheets. And poor little 
Toby, who hated wet and cold, was out in it! 

James did not need to be urged by Toby’s 
mistress. At four o’clock the next morning, just 
as day was breaking, he had started out again 
with Roy, to look for him. Up and down the 
woods they went together, James calling and 
whistling and telling Roy to find Toby. Roy 

o 


194 


Toby 


would look up at him each time he mentioned 
Toby’s name, and run aimlessly here and there, 
but he seemed utterly dazed and useless, for a 
collie has no scent. Disgusted and sick at 
heart, James continued his search until finally 
they came out on the other side of the woods 
three miles from home, without having found a 
trace of Toby. 

Thoroughly disheartened now, James was 
turning to come back, when Roy, who had gone 
through the woods without making a sign, now 
ran to a lonely tree that stood in a field about a 
rod distant from the outskirts of the woods, 
and began to bark madly. Now he was another 
dog, sure of his ground and quivering with in¬ 
telligence. Impatient at James’s delay, he ran 
excitedly back to him, staying just long enough 
to tell him in sharp, quick, joyous barks that 
Toby was found ! This done, he rushed back 
again to the tree, dancing around it in his eager¬ 
ness and continuing to give loud tongue to his 
delight. 

And there, sure enough, James found little 
Toby in a hole under the tree, alive, well, and 


Toby 


195 


perfectly dry. His collar had caught in the 
roots of the tree and held him fast, and there 
he must have remained and starved to death, 
had it not been for Rob-roy McGregor. As it 
was, he had had nothing to eat for thirty-six 
hours, he had barked so much that he was 
hoarse and could only croak, but as soon as 
James released him from his prison underground, 
still full of the spirit of adventure, he darted 
down into a hole under another tree, and was 
so intent on hunting and looking for game of 
his sort, that James in despair picked him up 
and carried him home. And all the way back 
Roy, quite as if he knew what a close call it 
had been for his little friend, was leaping about 
him in a transport of delight. 

And now Toby and Roy had had their last 
hunt together. No more would we see these two 
life-long cronies scampering off to the woods. 
No more would the woods ring with the staccato 
bark of the collie, answered on a higher key by 
Toby. It was all over, the gay life they had 
had together. Poor handsome, theatrical Rob- 
roy McGregor was no more. 


196 


Toby 


He died of some strange and nameless malady. 
Only a few weeks before his death, Blarney had 
been just grazed by a passing train. Roy saw him 
as he was struck, and although Blarney was not 
seriously injured, he had cried pitifully, and Roy 
had seemed beside himself, expressing his sym¬ 
pathy by licking Blarney all over. It was but 
a day or two later that a strange, gaunt, hungry- 
looking dog came on the place — a dog that ran 
obliquely here and there without apparent 
object. Roy, regarding him as an impudent 
intruder, pitched on to him, and the strange dog, 
snapping and snarling, had bitten Roy savagely, 
and James had to come to the rescue and drive 
him off. No one had ever seen the dog before 
nor did we ever see him again, and the incident 
passed from mind. It may not have been the 
cause, any more than his distress over the acci¬ 
dent to Blarney, yet, as we looked back, it was 
only a little time after that that he began to be 
unlike himself. His ears would prick up, his 
eyes dilate, he would watch Toby intently, and 
then make a sudden spring at his old comrade, 
showing his teeth. Indeed his curiously in- 


Toby 


197 


tent interest focussed so upon Toby that they 
could not be left in a room together. He was 
feverishly restless, excited, and distraught. He 
behaved more and more strangely, growing 
weaker each day, and the air was filled with his 
pitiful little cries and moans. Nothing seemed 
to help him, and finally he crawled off by him¬ 
self one morning early and there on the front 
lawn, where he used to watch for the passer-by, 
and plunge out on him with insolent delight, 
he stretched himself out and died. 

For weeks and weeks Toby mourned for him. 
He had no heart to go to the woods, but hung 
around James and his mistress as if they, too, 
might vanish unless he stood guard. Two 
other dear friends had left him within a few 
months of each other, so who could tell ? One’s 
world can crumble so to dust in such a little 
while. He was pathetically sad these days, 
this poor, loving little hero of a capacious heart! 
And each day he missed his old comrade more 
and more. 

There is no knowing how long Toby’s melan¬ 
choly would have lasted, if it had not been for 


198 


Toby 

Blarney. Blarney, too, was lonely without 
the collie, and he tried to make up to Toby 
by following him about and urging him to forget 
his sorrow and take an active interest in life 
again. He entreated him to be once more the 
old intrepid, indefatigable Toby that always 
had a following — he would follow him, he 
told him, he would do his best to take Rob-roy 
McGregor’s place. To be sure, he had never 
found wood-chucking particularly interesting, 
but had gone along out of a dog’s inherent socia¬ 
bility, never staying for the death because 
killing was not Blarney’s favourite pastime. 
All this he forgot, however, in his anxiety to 
help Toby brace up. And at last one day 
Blarney succeeded in coaxing Toby back to 
the woods where, for friendship’s sake, he made 
a great fuss over a woodchuck hole just as Rob- 
roy McGregor used to do. 

When Toby returned from the woods that 
day, there was another look on his face. Al¬ 
though friends had gone and life was that much 
sadder, there was work yet in the world for 
him to do, his look informed his mistress. He 


Toby 


199 


had a gigantic, a life-long task before him, if 
he were finally to succeed in clearing those 
acres and acres of woods, to his satisfaction, 
of small and destructive wild animals that 
burrowed in the roots of decaying trees, where 
nothing but the tireless energy of a small fox 
terrier could unearth them. And how much 
more difficult the task when they climbed the 
tree at his approach, instead of going into the 
convenient hole, and on some branch far out of 
reach, chattered a defiance that made his shrill 
bark become in spite of himself, an impotent 
yet piercing yelp of rage! 

There was work indeed for Toby ! and now it 
was two dogs, not three, that rushed off to the 
woods day after day, a long, lean red Irish setter 
and a little white fox terrier with black spots 
on his back. And this tale might come down 
dismally to the time when there was but one 
dog — and then none at all, if James had not 
had one of his silent inspirations whereby Toby 
became a father and James the happy owner of 
one of his offspring. 

In this matter, James had taken no member 


200 


Toby 


of Toby’s family into his counsel. No one, not 
even Toby’s mistress — who might have been 
consulted, one would think — knew that he 
was meditating an experiment in eugenics. 
But, as has been said before, having lived 
these many years in a family of women, James 
had learned that impenetrability is a tremendous 
asset in this business of holding your own. 

So Toby’s mistress was left in ignorance until, 
if he were to adopt a puppy, the truth must out, 
and not until then, indeed, did Toby himself 
fully understand. Who of us, in truth, do know, 
in this great cosmic order of things, whither we 
are being led ! Alas ! had Toby known from the 
outset what James was getting him into, he 
would have thought better of it, we may be sure. 

Not the first hint did James give, however, 
and it was not until long afterwards that Toby’s 
mistress heard the true story of Toby’s courtship 
in which he conducted himself with such fault¬ 
less dignity and exquisite propriety of conduct 
that she challenges any dog owner of any breed 
whatsoever of dogs, to relate anything of similar 
kind. 


Toby 


201 


It seems, as the story runs, that James and 
Mr. S. the owner of Vixen, a beautiful fox terrier 
bitch, had been secretly putting their heads to¬ 
gether for some time. Mr. S. was one of Toby’s 
most ardent admirers, and he, as well as James, 
was animated by a great desire to perpetuate a 
race of heroes. It appears, however, that when 
Toby was first introduced to Vixen — this 
being a made marriage — he looked at her 
askance, with the proverbial masculine indif¬ 
ference under such cut and dried conditions. 
Then he went home, and it is to be presumed 
that he thought it over. His affection for 
James had some weight, we may be sure, — he 
was ever desirous of pleasing those whom he 
loved, this wonderful little Toby ! And pos¬ 
sibly Vixen’s charms won on him, too. How¬ 
ever this may be, the next night about midnight 
Toby asked to go outdoors and was gone for 
the rest of the night. 

Now this very well-bred little Toby, it seems, 
did not stop to howl out his love in imploring 
tones of endearment, as most dogs would have 
done, underneath his lady’s window, which 


202 


Toby 


happened as he very well knew to be the stable — 
had he not been taken there by Janies the day 
before ? Instead then of turning aside in the 
direction of the stable, little Toby goes manfully 
up the broad walk that leads to the house, 
mounts the steps, scratches at the front door, 
and then barks for admission. 

The delighted owner of Vixen — we had the 
story from his wife — leaped out of bed, ex¬ 
claiming, “ There’s Toby !” and dressing hastily 
he hurried down to open the door to Vixen’s 
little suitor, who had evidently reasoned it out 
that the proper course was to come straight 
to Mr. S. and announce his willingness and ask 
if he still had his consent. 

And then having conducted his wooing in the 
most delicately honourable fashion, having done 
only what James and Mr. S. wanted him to do, 
having behaved with dignity, like a little 
gentleman, in short, poor Toby, alas, was 
punished for staying out overnight by his 
cruel and uncomprehending mistress ! 

James had brought Toby home the next 
morning, vouchsafing no explanation, except 


Toby 


203 


that he had picked him up in Waverly. As 
usual he avoided with care the deadly hiatus 
that creeps in so unavoidably in speech when 
one has something to conceal. Women were 
quick to notice any inconsistencies in a narrative, 
James had found. But where silence is com¬ 
plete, either they suspect nothing, or their 
imagination is able to concoct a story that is 
perfect in all its parts. Quite naturally the 
story may not be true — but if it is satisfactory 
to them — surely, what’s the odds ! 

This time, however, James counted without his 
host. Even a little dog, who stays away from 
home all night without plausible or adequate 
excuse, renders himself liable to a certain 
amount of mistrust. And James ought to have 
known that although a complete and guarded 
silence covers a multitude of sins, as every 
woman knows, yet for all that, when circum¬ 
stances are of a certain character, only a full 
explanation will save the day. 

So poor little Toby, because appearances 
were certainly against him, was treated by his 
mistress as if he were a loose and dangerous 


£04 


Toby 


character. He had to submit to having his 
every movement watched with suspicion. And 
worse than all else he was made to wear the 
humiliating leash that he had not seen since 
puppy days. No more could he dash off freely 
to the woods. And even when he was not 
tied or led by a leash, it was still left on, attached 
to his collar, and that was the greatest indignity 
of all! Even his hated enemy the cat played 
with it as it trailed along after him in the grass! 
And he had had cats so trained out of him, and 
for the matter of that, his feelings were so hurt, 
that he doubted if there was enough spirit left 
in him to kill a mouse ! 

Once more — it was the last time, however — 
Toby felt to the full the ignominy that may lie 
in wait for a hero of virile tastes, who, for all 
that, is tied with the tightest of hard knots to 
the apron strings of a woman. 

James, too, was again silently cursing a fate 
that had made him cast in his lot with women. 

There was an agony of appeal in Toby’s eyes 
whenever he looked towards James. But pru¬ 
dence and modesty alike forbade James from 


Toby 


205 


revealing his share of the plot. And thus, in the 
clutch of his two most distinguishing traits, he 
had to stand helpless by and see his little favourite 
in disgrace for a fault that was all his own. And 
stillToby would have gone to the ends of the earth 
for James who had gotten him into this plight! 

All that he could do, James did for Toby. 
The very atmosphere about him was permeated 
with silent, oppressive disapproval. In every 
look and gesture could be read an unspoken 
protest. And Toby’s mistress, being not without 
experience, read the signs that there was some¬ 
thing unusual in the wind — something here she 
did not understand, and very thoughtfully, she 
stooped down to little Toby and took off his leash. 

Now and then it is just possible that it is 
even trying to a woman to be a woman. 

For quite some time after the leash was taken 
off and he was free to go about at will, Toby 
studiously and pointedly avoided his mistress. 
His manner told her plainly enough that she 
had, after the way of a woman, wounded and 
insulted him by her unjust suspicions and that 
everything was off between them. Crackers 


206 


Toby 

were refused or taken grudgingly from her hand. 
Other person’s laps were preferred to hers. 
Indeed Toby’s mistress was obliged quite humbly 
to make her peace, before Toby would consent 
to forget his resentment and be a loving little 
dog once more. 

Truth to tell, poor little Toby had experienced 
more than once the difficulties that lie in the 
way of him who would serve two masters — 
especially when one is a mistress. 

Toby’s heart had indeed been wrung of late. 
To lose two dearly loved friends, one after the 
other, is very sorrowful. To be punished unfairly 
and made an object of derision, if you have a 
sense of your own dignity, is hard to bear. Yet 
it may be questionable if to gain an unmannerly 
pup who supplants you in the affection of your 
best and dearest friend is not a grief even more 
poignant and insupportable. To be obliged to 
leap from chair to chair to escape his playful 
nips and preserve your dignity at the same time; 
to try to look pleasant about it when you are 
bored to death; to be told that he is your own 
son and you must love him, when you hate him 































* 















































































Toby 


207 


and your heart is filled with jealousy instead; 
and above all to see your own Janies absorbed 
in that little white pup so that he has no time 
for you, was piling it on to a little fox terrier who 
had suffered much of late. 

Surely he had had griefs a plenty to bear. 
But even his least partisan friend must concede 
that this was woe itself ! 

Toby could not know, of course, that James’s 
absorption in Pupsie was due to a scientific 
interest in eugenics, nor that James was hoping 
to find in Pupsie a higher reproduction of 
Toby’s self. Toby thought it was love. 

And again, as in those first days of furious 
farming, Toby was obliged to fall back upon his 
mistress for consolation. 

Well did she know — this mistress of his — 
that it is the function of a woman to stand by. 
And Toby could always be sure of her. For 
a long time he had felt that it was not altogether 
humiliating to belong to a woman after all. 
In truth, like many another hero, he rather liked 
it. To be sure, she had not understood about his 
courtship, but the less said about that the 


208 


Toby 


better. And to everyone’s surprise Toby 
growled about nothing at all. 

Pupsie grew up. And here — strange anom¬ 
aly ! — in Toby’s son was the perfect making 
of a little house dog. He would leave James 
any time for Toby’s mistress, but she, unlike 
the fickle James, remained steadfastly loyal 
to Toby. Having cared all these years for a 
little warrior, and grown used to the ways of 
heroes, she liked no other kind. And it must 
be owned that Pupsie was quite unlike his sire. 
He was cunning, but there was nothing of the 
sport about him. He was no ratter. He never 
killed a chicken. To be sure, there was a certain 
cock that strutted too much to suit his fancy, 
and Pupsie never failed to chase him whenever 
he came in his vicinity. Notwithstanding his 
animosity for this one, however, it extended to 
no other. He was never known to kill a cat; in 
fact, he would play with them, as a puppy. 
Here again he had his preferences. There was 
one cat that he particularly disliked, and he 
carried this resentment down to the third and 
fourth generation, being able to distinguish 


Toby 


209 


her kittens and the kittens of her kittens from 
those of another cat that he especially liked. 

Never, indeed, was it given to little Pupsie to 
comprehend the full glory of the woods. Those 
were delights that only a mighty hunter can 
know. Not once did Toby’s son present himself 
to us with head and face a mass of scratches and 
digs, to stand patiently and unflinchingly while 
someone bathed away the blood and shudderingly 
dressed his wounds. Nay, little Pupsie, for the 
matter of that, never gave occasion for the tears 
of anguish and sympathy to flow, and for that 
reason, perhaps, won only a pallid affection quite 
unlike the glowing, enthusiastic love that a hero 
of much courage and a warlike nature inspires. 

James was obliged to admit that his experi¬ 
ment, as far as raising up a successor worthy of 
Toby, was a failure. Toby was indeed without 
an equal! And because Toby was a forgiving 
dog who loved much, James had no difficulty 
in reinstating himself, and they became faster 
friends than ever. Pupsie, too, was forgiven, now 
that he no longer usurped his place with James, 
and Toby and his son became the greatest friends. 

p 


“ The dogs are the keepers of the Kinvad bridge 
which extends over hell and leads to paradise; for 
the souls of the righteous it widens to the length of 
nine javelins; for the souls of the wicked it narrows 
to a thread , and they fall down into hell. This 
bridge is known in many mythologies. It is the 
Siwath bridge of the Musulmans. The soul enters 
the way made by Time and open both to the wicked 
and the righteous. At the head of the Kinvad bridge , 
the holy bridge made by Mazda , they ask for their 
spirits and souls the reward for the worldly goods 
which they gave away here below. Then comes the 
well-shapen, strong , and tail-formed maid with the 
dogs at her side. (The soul of the dead on the 
fourth day , finds itself in the presence of a maid of 
divine beauty or fiendish ugliness , according as he 
himself was good or bad , and she leads him into 
heaven or hell; this maid is his own conscience.) 
The four-eyed dog , or white dog with yellow ears that 
drove away Death among the Parsi is similar to the 
three-headed Cerberus that watches at the doors of 
hell , and still more to the two brown four-eyed dogs 
of Yama who guard the way to the realm of death. 
This identity of the four-eyed dog of the Parsi with 
Cerberus and Yama s dogs becomes even more ap¬ 
parent from the Parsi tradition that the yellow¬ 
eared dog watches at the head of the Kinvad bridge 
which leads from this to the next world , and with his 
barking drives away the fiend from the souls of the 
holy ones lest he should drag them down to hell.” 
— Darmesteter. 


“ The last of the thirteen constellations of the old 
Mexican zodiac was regarded as the image of a dog's 
head and therefore called itzcuntli, ‘ dog.' This 
constellation , as the last of the series was naturally 
connected with ideas like end , death , underworld. 

“ Thus we understand why , with the Mexicans , 
do*/ becomes the animal of the dead. When the 
ancient inhabitants of Anahuac burned a corpse , 
they killed a red dog and laid it beside the dead body. 
They thought that four years after death this dog had 
to carry the soul over Chicunauhapan , the * nine-fold 
stream' that flows around the innermost hell , the 
final abode of the dead. A small artificial blue dog , 
the xolocozcatl, was a part of the ceremonial dress 
which the effigy of the dead warrior wore. 

“ The mythical personage Zolotl is generally rep¬ 
resented with a dog's head , sometimes even as an 
entire dog. [Thus] Zolotl who carries the sun has 
been conceived as a parallel to the guide and carrier 
of the human soul , the dog." — Herman Beyer. 

In Japanese legend and superstition the dog is 
the protector of mankind; while the cat is usually 
represented as a dead y enemy to man. The 
Japanese believed in the magic power of the dog 
against all forms of evil demons. Indeed the dog's 
bad , demoniacal side has apparently never become 
popular in Japan y for the legends in which he plays 
this part , so common in China , are rare in the coun¬ 
try of the Rising Sun. 

At the four gates of the capital in China , dogs 
were crucified in order to keep away evil spirits. 

“Like a dog , he hunts in dreams ."— Tennyson. 


CHAPTER XII 


“La vie, c’est du courage !” — Balzac. 

And thinks, admitted to that equal sky 
His faithful dog shall bear him company.” 

— Pope. 

N these latter days that were slipping 
so peacefully by, one could hardly 
recall those inquisitive, impertinent 
little eyes that used to look out in 
such riotous search of mischief — so warm and 
soft with love and understanding were these 
eyes that looked at you now. In truth, this 
little dog, as age came on, seemed to show us the 
way age should come to all. In beauty, in 
mellowness, in such ripeness of appreciation and 
love that you scarcely realised he was growing- 
old. 

In summer he would trot off sedately to the 
woods each day, always accompanied by faith¬ 
ful old Blarney, and sometimes by Pupsie, too. 
But no more did he bound through the tall 
213 





Toby 


214 

grass as if he were flying. There were no more 
wild, break-neck dashes — no more thrilling 
conflicts. For Toby and Blarney these were 
the memories of yesterday. Much of the time 
summer days he would sleep in his favourite 
chair on the porch, and in winter he was content 
to doze before the glowing fire-place. 

This little Toby had lived to see many changes, 
for fifteen years is a very long life for a dog, and 
many things can happen. The distant male 
member of the family made the same long jour¬ 
ney the mother had made and came no more 
to the hill. And Toby’s own mistress, who used 
to go away on visits, now came home on visits. 
It is true she stayed away no longer, and re¬ 
mained home just as long, but even a little dog 
like Toby knows that it isn’t the same thing 
at all. 

Losses and changes and things that were 
inexplicable had come to him by the way. Yet 
the one grief that would have been unendurable 
was spared him — for he still had his beloved 
James. Toby had never disguised from anyone 
that James was the idol of his heart. To James 



No MORE DID HE BOUND THROUGH THE TALL GRASS AS IF HE 

were Flying. 






Toby 


215 


— to the one who had understood him from the 
first — he had attached himself for all time with 
a dog’s ardent and unswerving love. And 
had James left him — had James gone first, 
Toby would have mourned himself to death. 
Indeed, to have separated two such friends, be¬ 
fore the final and inevitable parting comes, 
would have been cruelty itself. 

Then, too, to drag him away from all his 
avocations, from woods and woodchucks, from 
ditches and muskrats, from stables, and barns 
and granaries, where rats and mice exist in 
pestiferous quantities, unless a little fox terrier 
is there faithfully to perform his duty of ex¬ 
termination ; to take him from the home he 
loved, from his favourite chairs, from all his 
friends, from Blarney, Pupsie, — from the en¬ 
vironment, in short, to which he was so exactly 
adapted, and transplant him to a city home, 
where he must sacrifice his normal life for love 
of her — ah, no ! — Toby’s mistress dearly as 
she loved her little dog, had not the heart to do 
it. 

Toby from the first had made it clear that he 


216 


Toby 


was a dog with work to do in the world. And 
there on the hill little Toby had lived a wonder¬ 
ful life. He had lived to the full his own life. 
No one, man or dog, had ever lived it more. 
To have had the great good fortune to find 
the niche in life where every instinct and 
aspiration can be realised is rare for man or 
beast. Yet little Toby, sent to perform his 
mission of cheer, by a heart that was big with 
love and full of the genius of giving, had found 
it here. This home of woods and fields and love 
was seemingly created for Toby. They each 
belonged to the other, for this home without 
Toby would have been sad indeed. 

Yet it was a touching sight to see him each 
time his mistress came home. No matter how 
many months she might have been away, there 
was the same instant, joyous recognition of her 
from Toby as his own beloved goddess, who, 
next to James, stood first among all other gods 
and goddesses in his eyes. All the time of her 
absence Toby would never go into his mistress’s 
room. It was a fact noted by all that even 
when the door was ajar, he would never enter 


Toby 


217 


her room. But the moment she returned to 
faithful and unforgetting little Toby, the past 
was all restored without suggestion or persuasion. 
And indeed the fullness of joy could not have 
been more eloquently expressed than by the un¬ 
conscious way in which he re-adopted her and 
her belongings. 

It never failed. He would invariably precede 
her to her room in his eagerness that first night, 
and put himself to bed in his own corner as 
of old with an air of the uttermost content¬ 
ment and satisfaction. “Home at last!” every 
curve of his body seemed to say. “When you 
are away, I am here on a visit, too. They all 
make much of me, but it is only home when 
you are here — and now we are home together.” 

Now again Toby’s mistress came home on a 
visit, and received the same rapturous greeting 
from Toby. And that night as usual when she 
went to her old room she found Toby already 
there. There had been the same delicious by¬ 
play of re-adoption; indeed, it seemed as if he 
could not tell her often enough his joy and de¬ 
light that she, his mistress, nurse, and goddess 


218 Toby 

had reappeared, after one of her interminable 
absences. 

And then, as if he had only waited for her 
coming, the next day he sickened and she 
became his nurse once more. Back again now 
to the days of mighty battles — but this battle 
was with an enemy of another sort. An enemy 
that comes in all sorts of guises, and who always 
wins — and in winning always loses. 

To Toby, who had never fought with his own 
kind, he appeared in the guise of one of his own 
species, a huge, skulking hound who came from 
the back country to the little village one day, 
and without provocation pitched upon a little 
white dog whose fighting days were passed, and 
after biting him savagely in the neck, had tossed 
him high up in the air, and let him drop for dead. 

Toby had gone over town with James, as was 
his daily custom, and was trotting peaceably 
along, stopping to peer into some of his favourite 
rat holes — for who knew what might be found 
in the crumbling interstices of stone foundations 
underlying old frame buildings in a little country 
town ! All his life he had put an inquisitive 


219 


Toby 

little nose into these self-same places. It was a 
part of his daily existence. A habit of nearly 
fifteen years. And while James dallied in the 
post-office, which was also the general store, 
ostensibly getting packages of things done up, 
that took an unconscionably long time some 
days, Toby thought, especially if there were any 
politics in the air, yet that gave him plenty of 
time for a careful and thorough inspection, and 
he did not mind the waiting as a rule, for usually 
one of these parcels contained something in¬ 
teresting. In truth, no matter how heated the 
political discussion, James rarely forgot to bring 
home bones for the dogs. 

This day James had lingered somewhat longer 
than usual, for the condition of the country had 
demanded that he give full vent to those red-hot 
democratic principles that boiled up obstreper¬ 
ously within him, whenever the name of an erst¬ 
while idol of the republican party was mentioned. 

He did not see Toby when he came out, and 
concluded that for once he had grown tired of 
waiting for him, and had gone home. He did 
not think much about him, to tell the truth, for 


220 


Toby 


Toby was known and loved by everyone in 
Waverly and no one ever molested him except 
to pet him. So James came home, his head still 
full of all the big subjects that were menacing 
the world, and quite forgot to wonder where 
Toby was, until, hours after, there crept into the 
living room, no one knew how, a little brown 
dog, nearly black except where he was splashed 
with red — a little dog who had once been white, 
but whom no one now would have recognised 
as Toby — so completely covered was he with 
the oozing mud of muck that was strangely 
tinged with red about the throat. 

For days no one thought he would live, but 
he did live and apparently got quite well again. 
And Toby’s family gloried in Jiis marvellous 
vitality and endurance, and boasted exultingly 
that he would surpass the famous English fox 
terrier Belgrave Joe, who lived to be twenty 
years old. 

But Toby knew better. He lived until his 
mistress came quite two months later, and then 
he knew that she would see and understand that 
there was something cruelly wrong with him — 


Toby 


221 


something he had borne patiently and uncom¬ 
plainingly, waiting for her to come. She had 
only one fault, this mistress of his, she would 
go off and leave him. She was a wise mistress, 
but not always an understanding one. Rats 
and woodchucks and woods and things don’t 
mean much — not half so much as one’s mis¬ 
tress when the fighting days are over. No one 
seemed to know, not even James, that a little 
dog was growing old. Just because he looked 
well and handsome still, and carried himself with 
quiet dignity, asking little of the body that was 
once such a perfect instrument to express his 
ardent spirit, — did they think he had lost his 
spirit? Did no one suspect that he asked no 
more of it, that his spirit, still as ardent as ever, 
made no more demands in pity of the body 
that was painfully wearing out ? 

His mistress would know. She had always 
known just how to help him. Now she was 
here, he could give up and she would see him 
through. When the pain seemed too intolerable 
to be borne, some way it eased a bit to feel the 
stroke of her hand. And just the sound of 


Toby 


222 

her voice held comfort in it. A little dog — for 
a brave fox terrier is only a little dog after all — 
feels so small and helpless with the Unknown 
closing about him — especially at night. Every¬ 
thing is so much worse for dogs and men at 
night. She understood, this mistress of his, that 
it is no disgrace to be beaten in this last fight of 
all, and after a start of sudden terror, what re¬ 
assurance to feel his goddess there. To look at 
her at last in the dim hours of early morning, 
after days and nights of pain for which there is no 
alleviation, and with burning eyes of anguish 
implore her aid. She knows, my mistress knows, 
that losing now is gaining — to regain some¬ 
where ! And we are losing, inch by inch. What 
do men call it when they lose to this mysterious 
foe who always conquers in the end ? They 
lose and then they find — what ? — Negation, 
Nirvana, Eternal Peace, the Happy Hunting 
Ground, the Life Everlasting ? 

Ah, joyous, abounding Life! The woods 
road — the fresh scent of early spring. Again 
he leaps far ahead followed by Roy and Blarney. 
All young again ! Youth is again throbbing in 


Toby 


223 


the sweet spring air. Youth — Eternal Life ! 
His spirit is bounding to be off — to be free once 
more. Will no one help him to lose — and 
thus to gain ? 

He started from his dream of spring. It was 
morning and another cruel night had passed. 
His mistress, James, and a strange man were 
bending over him, a man with a tender voice 
who said pitifully, “You poor sick little dog !” 
He felt his mistress take him up gently. She 
held him in her arms and kissed him — and did 
she say good-bye ? There were tears in her 
voice, but surely she knew what it would mean 
to a tired, suffering little dog to be helped to 
pass over ! She knew, for he had told her in 
that dim morning hour. She kissed him again 
and put him in James’s arms — his two best 
friends who had never failed him — who had 
not failed him now — for sleep that had been 
denied him for ten long weary days and nights 
was coming — had come — at last! 

And that gay intrepid spirit, released from 
the failing outer shell of flesh, is it once more 
leaping, bounding with the old time exuberance 


224 


Toby 


— entering upon that last 44 glorious adventure” 
which Maeterlinck calls Death ? 

Like St. Roch, to whom heaven was not 
heaven without his little dog, Toby’s mistress 
thinks — albeit a little wistfully, but why not 
hopefully ? — that when her spirit passes over, 
it would seem like 44 getting home again,” could 
she find waiting to bid her welcome to that region 
of Infinite Love, a little white fox terrier with a 
black spot over one eye and two black spots on 
his back — a little dog who was all love and 
life and truth and courage, and who answered 
to the name of Toby. 



“Lie here sequester’d: he this little mound 
Forever thine , and he it holy ground! 

Lie here , without a record of thy worth , 

Beneath the covering of the common earth! 

It is not from unwillingness to praise , 

Or want of love , that here no stone we raise: 

More thou deserv st: but this man gives to man , 
Brother to brother , this is all we can , 

Yet they to whom thy virtues made thee dear , 
Shall find thee through all changes of the year: 
This oak points out thy grave; the silent tree 
Will gladly stand a monument to thee. 

“I prayed for thee , and that thy end were past; 
And willingly have laid thee here at last: 

For thou hadst lived , till everything that cheers 
In thee had yielded to the weight of years; 
Extreme old age had wasted thee away; 

And left thee hut a glimmering of the day; 

Thy ears were deaf , and feeble were thy knees , — 
I saw thee stagger in the summer breeze y 


Q 


Too weak to stand against its sportive breath, 

And ready for the gentlest stroke of death. 

It came, and we were glad; yet tears were shed. 
Both man and woman wept when thou wert dead; 
Not only for a thousand thoughts that were 
Old household thoughts, in which thou hadst thy 
share, 

But for some precious boons vouchsafed to thee. 
Found scarcely anywhere in like degree. 

For love, that comes to all; the holy sense. 

Best gift of God, in thee was most intense: 

A chain of heart, a feeling of the mind, 

A tender sympathy, which did thee bind 
Not only to us men, but to thy kind: 

Yea, for thy fellow-brutes in thee we saw 
The soul of love, love's intellectual law: 

Hence, if we wept, it was not done in shame; 

Our tears from passion and from reason came, 

And therefore shalt thou be an honour'd name !' 9 

— Wordsworth. 


'' I S HE following pages contain advertisements of a 
A few of the Macmillan books on kindred subjects 



By CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS 


Children of the Wild 


Illustrations, cloth, i2ino, $1.35 net 

Mr. Roberts has told many stories of the wilds for adults and told 
them with remarkable success. Here he writes for boys particularly, 
still of the creatures of the forests and streams, but with a boy as 
the central human figure. Babe and his Uncle Andy and Bill, the 
guide, are camping in the wilderness. What they see and hear 
there suggest stories about young animals, the “ children of the 
wild.” These tales are recounted by Uncle Andy. In them there 
is not only evidenced Mr. Roberts’s skill as a writer of fiction, but 
also the fact that he is well versed in natural history. 


The Feet of the Furtive 

Decorated cloth, illustrated , $1.33 net 

“ Few writers can impart to the reader that which will instruct and 
delight him with the skill Mr. Roberts has shown. His book is sure 
to get a firm grip on the interest of every one in the household from 
the very youngest to the very oldest lover of good reading. More¬ 
over, the very excellent illustrations by Paul Bransom contribute to 
the enjoyment.” — Boston Globe. 

“ Mr. Roberts is one of those to whom the wilderness has unfolded 
itself, and in this book he gives us an insight into the lives of many 
of the forest dwellers.” — N. Y. Herald. 

“ Lovers of nature and of animals cannot do better for their pleas¬ 
ure than to read this book.”— Chicago Inter-Ocean. 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 


Publishers 


64-66 Fifth Avenue 


New York 



By Charles G. D. Roberts 
THE BACKWOODSMEN 

Illustrated. Cloth ismo $1.50 net 

**' The Backwoodsmen ’ shows that the writer knows the backwoods 
as the sailor knows the sea. Indeed, his various studies of wild life 
in general, whether cast in the world of short sketch or story or full- 
length narrative, have always secured an interested public. . . . Mr. 
Roberts possesses a keen artistic sense which is especially marked 
when he is rounding some story to its end. There is never a word 
too much, and he invariably stops when the stop should be made. 
. . . Few writers exhibit such entire sympathy with the nature of 
beasts and birds as he.” — Boston Herald. 

“ When placed by the side of the popular novel, the strength of these 
stories causes them to stand out like a huge primitive giant by the 
side of a simpering society miss, and while the grace and beauty of 
the girl may please the eye for a moment, it is to the rugged strength 
of the primitive man your eyes will turn to glory in his power and 
simplicity. In simple, forceful style Mr. Roberts takes the reader 
with him out into the cold, dark woods, through blizzards, stalking 
game, encountering all the dangers of the backwoodsmen’s life, and 
enjoying the close contact with Nature in all her moods. His descrip¬ 
tions are so vivid that you can almost feel the tang of the frosty air, 
the biting sting of the snowy sleet beating on your face, you can hear 
the crunch of the snow beneath your feet, and when, after heartlessly 
exposing you to the elements, he lets you wander into camp with the 
characters of the story, you stretch out and bask in the warmth and 
cheer of the fire.” — Western Review. 


KINGS IN EXILE 

Illustrated Cloth i 27 no $1.50 net 
Macmillan Fiction Library, 50 cents 

“ More wonderful animal tales such as only Mr. Roberts can relate. 
With accurate knowledge of the exiled beasts and a vivid imagination, 
the author writes stories that are even more than usually interest¬ 
ing. The antagonistic feelings that exist beneath the shaggy coats, 
and the methods of stealthy warfare of wild beasts, are all minutely 
described and the enemies illustrated.” — Book News Monthly. 

" It is surprising how much of the wilderness his wistful eye discovers 
in a Central Park buffalo yard. For this gift of vision the book will 
be read, a vision with its reminder of the scent of dark forests of fir, 
the awful and majestic loneliness of skv-towering peaks, the roar ot 
the breakers and salty smell of the sea, the whispering silences of the 
forests. We rise from its pages with the breath of the open spaces in 
our lungs." — Boston Transcript. 


PUBLISHED BY 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York 



Neighbors Unknown 

By CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS 

Decorated cloth , i2mo, illustrated , $i.jo net 

“ Mr. Roberts has a wonderful knowledge of wild animals, and 
we are thrilled by his vivid scenes.” — Boston Times. 

“The stories are thrilling and hold one interested throughout.” 
— Indianapolis News. 

“ Mr. Roberts knows his animals intimately and writes about 
them with understanding and reality.” — The Continent. 

“Whether viewed as stories, as natural history, or as literature, 
young and old should lose no time in making the acquaintance of 
‘Neighbors Unknown.’” — N. Y. Times. 


Dogtown 

Being Some Chapters from the Annals of the Waddles Family 
By Mrs. MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT 

Author of “ Tornmy-Anne and the Three Hearts," “ Wabeno the Magician,” 

“ Four-footed Americans and Their Kin,” “ Citizen Bird,” “ Bird- 
craft,” “ The Dream Fox Story Book,” etc. 

Cloth , izmo, $f.jo net 

Mrs. Wright’s personal knowledge of dogs gives the incidents the 
stamp of truth, and the numerous illustrations are from photographs 
by the author of real dogs and actual scenes. Though some of the 
characters of “ Wabeno ” and “ Tommy-Anne ” appear in this book, 
it is entirely complete in itself and a new story. 

Profusely illustrated from photographs by the author. 

“The dogs are entirely delightful, made alive and personal as only 
the closest intimacy of knowledge and understanding could make 
them.” — The Nation. 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



Jack London's Thrilling Stories of Dogs 


The Call of the Wild 


Decorated cloth, i2mo, profusely illustrated in colors 
$1.50 net; by mail, $1.63 

To all readers of Jack London and particularly to those who love 
his masterpiece, this new edition of “ The Call of the Wild ” will 
mean much. Some of the previous issues of this great book were 
thought to be beautiful, but none of them seems so now in compari¬ 
son with the latest one, the make-up of which is distinguished by a 
number of features. In the first place there are many full-page plates 
reproduced in color from paintings done by Mr. Bransom. More 
than this, the first two pages of each chapter are printed in colors 
and decorated with head pieces and drawings, while every other two 
pages carry black and white half tones in the text, also the work of 
Mr. Bransom. 

“ A big story in sober English, and with thorough art in the con¬ 
struction ; a wonderfully perfect bit of work; a book that will be 
heard of long. The dog’s adventures are as exciting as any man’s 
exploits could be, and Mr. London’s workmanship is wholly sat¬ 
isfying.” — The New York Sun. 


White Fang 

i2mo, illustrated in colors, $1.50 net 

“ A thrilling story of adventure . . . stirring indeed . . . and it 
touches a chord of tenderness that is all too rare in Mr. London’s 
work. ”— Record-Herald , Chicago. 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 




THE MACMILLAN FICTION LIBRARY 

Each volume , cloth, i2mo, 50 cents net 


NEW TITLES 

Mother. By Kathleen Norris. 

Adventure. By Jack London. 

The Loves of Pelleas and Etarre. By Zona 

Gale. 

The Heart of Rome. By F. Marion Crawford. 
The Justice of the King. By Hamilton Drum¬ 
mond. 

The History of David Grieve. By Mrs. T. Hum¬ 
phry Ward. 

Disenchanted. By Pierre Loti. 

Four Feathers. By A. E. W. Mason. 

John Ermine. By Frederick Remington. 

Fair Margaret. By F. Marion Crawford. 
Patience Sparhawk. By Gertrude Atherton. 
The Long Road. By John Oxenham. 

The Convert. By Elizabeth Robins. 

The Common Lot. By Robert Herrick. 

The very best fiction, attractive and durable binding, 
and clear readable pages, all these are represented in this 
new library, the first volumes of which, published last 
spring, have served favorably to introduce the series. 
That there is to be no let up in the excellence of the 
reading is indicated by the authors now announced for 
inclusion. _ 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 





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